locomotive bipeds and state-room sailors

Image Credit: Steamboat Times

Point is, they should quit whining:

At the foot of these rapids was a passenger barge in tow of a steam keel-boat, with about twenty passengers, who had already waited some two weeks with Turkish resignation, for fate, or higher water, to forward them on their journey. Genius of railroads! spirit of a travelling age! Think, ye eastern locomotive bipeds, who, spirited over the earth at the rate of 600 miles a day, snarl at the grievous detention of a minute,—think of this, and learn moderation.

--Notes and Reminiscences No. 3 (Army and Navy Chronicle / July 23, 1840); and Scenes and Adventures in the Army (June 1842; 1857)

Deleted from the first page of Typee:

Oh! ye state-room sailors, who make so much ado about a fourteen-days’ passage across the Atlantic; who so pathetically relate the privations and hardships of the sea, where, after a day of breakfasting, lunching, dining off five courses, chatting, playing whist, and drinking champaign punch, it was your hard lot to be shut up in little cabinets of mahogany and maple, and sleep for ten hours, with nothing to disturb you but “ those good-for-nothing tars, shouting and tramping over head,”—what would ye say to our six months out of sight of land?

Cut by Melville along with many other expurgations, the passage above does not appear in the Revised American edition of Typee. On the likely reason for this particular deletion, Bryan C. Short observes:

Removal of the “state-room sailors” passage dispels an early belligerence out of tune with Tommo’s narrative personality in the rest of the work. --Bryan C. Short, "The Author at the Time": Tommo and Melville's Self-Discovery in Typee.

With happy something: revising the start of Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Revisions reveal the writer's choices and perhaps something of the writer's creative process. Choosing this over that word, phrase, grammatical construction may show on occasion a distinctive bit of one's identity--or personality, or persona.

Here now, some good things from the comparison of three beginnings to Scenes and Adventures in the Army.  The latest is the 1857 book version, where the writer took some pains to revise the language of the 1842 magazine version in the Southern Literary Messenger, which had already been revised from the 1840 version of a differently titled magazine series in a different magazine, the Army and Navy Chronicle.

Check this out, from what originally was the second paragraph.  Here's the 1840 version. Those interesting asterisks mean something has already been left out, cut.  What was cut, I wonder? 

The stage was at the door. * * *. Relieved from those sorrowful partings which harrow the soul, but can scarce touch the sympathies of elastic youth and inexperience, I enjoyed the rapid motion of the coach, always exhilarating, but which was then fast severing me, perhaps forever, from my best friends, and all the familiar scenes of childhood.  (1840 Notes and Reminiscences)

Then we have the 1842 magazine version. In revision the writer or editor suppresses a few symptoms of juvenile wordiness, replacing the idea of torture in "harrow the soul" with more neutral "pains"; and deleting the word "inexperience" as redundant.  But the 1842 version still keeps the asterisks!  

The stage was at the door. * * *. Relieved from those sorrowful partings, from the pains of which elastic youth recovers so soon, I enjoyed the rapid motion of the coach, always exhilarating, but which was then fast severing me, perhaps forever, from friends, and all the familiar scenes of childhood.  (1842 Scenes and Adventures in the Arm)

https://books.google.com/books?id=KepEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA405&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

Thirdly, the 1857 book version.  Asterisks are gone, removing now any evidence that something was cut from the manuscript, before even the first 1840 printing. In 1857 it is deemed desirable to specify "stage-coach," instead of only "stage."

By 1857 the writer has learned, too, that one-sentence paragraphs improve readability.

And in a nifty trick of compressed subordination, "over" eliminates the need for "relieved from."  More compression: "pains" gone, recognizing possibly they are implied in "sorrowful," yet also postponing and re-assigning them to others, hurting family members whose "hearts" are newly understood to have "trembled painfully."  And will you look at this? With improved subordination, you really don't need all these words: "of which elastic youth recovers so soon." No, you revise the second clause to just say "with happy elasticity":

The stage-coach was at the door.

Those sorrowful partings over, with happy elasticity, I was soon enjoying the rapid motion of the coach--always exhilarating--but then severing me from the safe haven of home affections, and hearts which trembled painfully as I was thus launched on life's perilous voyage.  (1857 book)

 Who talks like that?

  Ah God! may Time with happy haste

  Bring wail and triumph to a waste,

    And war be done;   

(Donelson, from Battle-Pieces by Herman Melville)

Finally, the nautical metaphor was also added in revision of the 1842 magazine version of Scenes and Adventures in the Army, itself a revision of the 1840 Notes and Reminiscences of An Officer of the Army.  This nautical metaphor, I mean, figuring (at the beginning of the memoir) home as secure port ("safe haven"), adult life as a hazardous journey at sea: "launched on life's perilous voyage."

...one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.  (Moby-Dick)

Comparing 1840, 1842 and 1857 versions

More experimenting with Juxta Commons:  check out the opening paragraphs for three versions of Scenes and Adventures in the Army.  The series that furnished the start of Scenes and Adventures was originally titled "Notes and Reminiscences of An Officer of the Army." 

Army and Navy Chronicle
June 18, 1840