How we cite our quotes: (Chapter, Paragraph)
Quote #4
"You—pish! Why will the captain suffer these begging fellows on board?"
These pettish words were breathed by a well-to-do gentleman in a ruby-colored velvet vest, and with a ruby-colored cheek, a ruby-headed cane in his hand, to a man in a gray coat and white tie, who, shortly after the interview last described, had accosted him for contributions to a Widow and Orphan Asylum recently founded among the Seminoles. Upon a cursory view, this last person might have seemed, like the man with the weed, one of the less unrefined children of misfortune; but, on a closer observation, his countenance revealed little of sorrow, though much of sanctity. (6, 1-2)
No request for alms could go without the requisite hissing of a rich dude who just doesn't wanta Fanta. When the man in the grey-and-white suit asks for a donation to his charity, he gets the old "you're a liar and nobody likes you" treatment. We also get a nice long gander at this wealthy man's ruby garb. He is snazzy. We think there's more going on here than just a fashion show, though; it's almost as if the opulence of the dude's attire is in direct contrast to the needs to the needs of the less fortunate.
Quote #5
"Ah, well," smiled the other wanly, "if that subtle bane, we were speaking of but just now, is so soon beginning to work, in vain my appeal to you. Good-by."
"Nay," not untouched, "you do me injustice; instead of indulging present suspicions, I had rather make amends for previous ones. Here is something for your asylum. Not much; but every drop helps. Of course you have papers?"
"Of course," producing a memorandum book and pencil. "Let me take down name and amount. We publish these names. And now let me give you a little history of our asylum, and the providential way in which it was started." (6, 70-72)
We're still with the man in the grey-and-white suit. He's just got a clergyman to agree to donate to his charity. Psst: this clergyman has also just said that he feels bad for not believing in Guinea, and he's given Grey-and-white suit some change to give to Guinea the next time he sees him. All of a sudden, the clergyman wants to back out of donating to the charity, and these lines follow.
Basically Grey-and-white suit's like: Hmmm, are you letting the distrustful tendency in human nature poison you? Well, are you? Hmmm? The clergyman ponies up the cash—but not before he asks about "papers." Hmm, interesting. We're back at the notion that documentation is what determines what's legit. Grey-and-white suit writes his name down in a notebook with a pencil, and this semblance of a connection to an institution seems to be enough to prove that poor people are poor and that Grey-and-white suit is helping them.
Quote #6
Fortunately, to arrest these incoherencies, or rather, to vary them, a haggard, inspired-looking man now approached—a crazy beggar, asking alms under the form of peddling a rhapsodical tract, composed by himself, and setting forth his claims to some rhapsodical apostleship. Though ragged and dirty, there was about him no touch of vulgarity; for, by nature, his manner was not unrefined, his frame slender, and appeared the more so from the broad, untanned frontlet of his brow, tangled over with a disheveled mass of raven curls, throwing a still deeper tinge upon a complexion like that of a shriveled berry. Nothing could exceed his look of picturesque Italian ruin and dethronement, heightened by what seemed just one glimmering peep of reason, insufficient to do him any lasting good, but enough, perhaps, to suggest a torment of latent doubts at times, whether his addled dream of glory were true. (36, 43)
Frank and Mark Winsome are chatting when some dude pops up selling pamphlets. To inform? To entertain? Unclear. What we do know is that he's not quite all there. There are a variety of social levels on board this ship, and Melville's survey of passengers includes those experiencing poverty with some form of mental illness. The narrator notes that this dude comes off as inoffensive. He's got maybe a glimmer of reason, so we're rooting for him.