Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery

My mind flew on the wings of thought to my native country; I compared my doings and my sensations with those of that swarm of sordid beings who waste their lives in Wall-street, or in the purlieus of the courts intent on gain, and scrambling for the wrecks of the property of their unfortunate fellow beings, or hiring out the efforts of their minds to perform such loathsome work as their employers would pay them for;--men who feel themselves ennobled by their wealth, or by their technical knowledge; who think themselves superior to the useful classes of society; from whom I had often heard the scornful observation, 'he is nothing but a shipmaster;' as if those men who live and thrive but by the infirmities and vices of society were ennobled by their profession, and the hardy and adventurous mariner, whose occupation leads him to every climate and through every sea, to gather like the bee the useful and the delicious for the comfort and gratification of the native hive, should be degraded by his calling.