Den Koopman

During my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an ancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about whalers. The title was, “Dan Coopman,” wherefore I concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production of one “Fitz Swackhammer.” But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man, professor of Low Dutch and High German in the college of Santa Claus and St. Pott’s, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a box of sperm candles for his trouble—this same Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he spied the book, assured me that “Dan Coopman” did not mean “The Cooper,” but “The Merchant.” In short, this ancient and learned Low Dutch book treated of the commerce of Holland; and, among other subjects, contained a very interesting account of its whale fishery. 

-- Moby-Dick or The Whale Chapter 101 The Decanter 

William Scoresby, An Account of the Arctic Regions Volume 2

"I am only in a mood; buoyant and bitter; tameless as the Arab coursing his native desert; free as yonder soaring eagle! it's this wild mountain air! Let us have a fling at the world, — the poor dollar-dealing sinners, cooped up in their great dens — " 

--Scenes and Adventures in the Army

This view of "the world" as a collection of "dollar-dealing sinners, cooped up in their great dens" was added in revision of the August 1852 installment of Scenes Beyond the Western Border.

dollar-dealing sinners

"Mrs. Morewood had freely hinted that his [Herman Melville's] New York friends thought him crazy, and the most intimate of them, Duyckinck, had commented upon Moby-Dick [in the Literary World] like a missionary on Typee and had reprinted the review in the Dollar Magazine."  (Leon Howard)

"A significant event around the same time of the Moby-Dick debacle was Duyckinck’s acquisition of Holden’s Dollar Magazine in early 1851.  This magazine was the opposite of what the early Young America movement had stood for, embracing no issue of substance and devoted merely to commercial success and reading of a browsing nature."  (Widmer, Young America)

 "To the devil with you and your Daguerreotype!"

(Melville's Pierre to the fictionalized Evert Duyckinck)

"For Melville to portray Duyckinck in this manner, exploiting their personal correspondence, was to break the friendship…."
(Higgins and Parker, Reading Melville's Pierre)

Revision to the August 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" inserts new references to  a "fling" at "dollar dealing sinners," with a new excuse for the "fling":  calm down, it was "only a love tap."

Friend.—You are a monomaniac, by Jove! incapable of argument, or even conversation.

"I detest argument! it is the favorite resort of fools, to convince—themselves. 

"I am only in a mood ; buoyant and bitter; tameless as the Arab coursing his native desert; free as yonder soaring eagle! it's this wild mountain air! Let us have a fling at the world,—the poor dollar-dealing sinners, cooped up in their great dens—"

Friend.—But you began by a fling at me—

"Only a love tap, Friend; my way of argument. 

(Scenes and Adventures in the Army)