A Mute Goes Aboard a Boat on the Mississippi
- April Fools' Day: it's sunrise on the Mississippi in St. Louis. A dude appears out of nowhere like he's some great Incan legend. (That's Melville's nod to the golden-staff-carrying man of mystery and founder of Cusco. This latter-day Kuzco prob paid homage to the Peruvian leader—part man, part myth.)
- Our guy boards the boat.
- Cue token shot of hair, duds, and doodads: dude's blonde, rocking peach fuzz only (no beard), and wearing a cream suit with white fur cap, but, umm, here's something weird: he's got no bags with him. According to the crowd on board, his look plus lack of luggage and friends means he's a stranger. They don't take kindly to strangers.
- Whatevs, dude's onboard the Fidèle (that's French for "faithful"—special meaning much?) headed to New Orleans with a sense of duty.
- There's a crowd aboard and they stop judging our newbie for five hot seconds while they stare at a sign (it's unclear why this sign is such a thrill, but to each his own).
- Among the crowd are pickpockets and blokes hawking some dubious wares. Some of these are books on criminals and notorious bandits. This is a meta-moment with Melville name-dropping some books that exist IRL. In case we don't get that all of these characters are bad news bears, our narrator dubs them chevaliers. For realsies, that'd mean they would be honored French soldiers; for sarcastic funsies, this means—wink wink, nod nod—these guys are thoroughly up to no good and are definitely not soldiers.
- Back to our guy: he's threaded his way through the crowd up to the captivating placard. We still have no idea what it says, but our stranger decides to stand next to it, pulls out a slate. On it, he scribbles: "Charity thinketh no evil."
- Deep.
- This does not go over well with the crowd, so they give our dude a once-over. Their assessment: he's innocent but annoying. He doesn't belong. They push him to the side, and one dude with a bad attitude squashes his cap flat on his head. Sad.
- Our guy is undeterred. He updates his sign: "Charity suffereth long, and is kind." Crowd is really peeved now. They push him harder, and his lack of resentment upsets them all the more. They're violent types; he's not. According to them, he has got to go.
- Update to slate number three: "Charity endureth all things." The crowd stares at our guy, and he sort of walks in front of them, back and forth, meeting their gaze.
- Update to slate number four: "Charity believeth all things."
- And, finally, the last update: "Charity never faileth."
- It's worth noting that "charity" never gets erased when our guy updates his slate. It stays crisp while the rest of the words are smudged and written anew.
- After this keen observation, we get another this stranger is dif-fer-ent moment with a quick visual contrast: dude is standing there, staring at the audience with his charity slate, and up hops the local barber onto the scene. He's one of many vendors running a little dingy business on the boat. Whereas the stranger is tidy and quiet with a sharp little makeshift sign, the barber is gruff, loud, and props up a cheesy sign for his services.
- Turns out the crowd is cool with the barber's interruption. Weird.
- These folks are so not cool with the stranger's lingering presence; pushes turn into punches until he almost gets run down by two porters carrying luggage.
- This is the first time our guy seems distressed, and in the tussle, it becomes evident that he has a hearing impairment. The crowd continues to be unsympathetic. Shocking (not shocking).
- The stranger goes to sit underneath a ladder in the deck-passage area signaling his station on board the ship. He's tuckered out and promptly checks out. While he snoozes, the narrator clues us in to his look: he's tidy, but worn down. He looks like he's been travelling a long, long way—and this is not his last stop.