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[00:00.34] CHAPTER 8.The Pulpit.
[00:04.06] I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness entered;immediately as the storm pelted door flew back upon admitting him,
[00:13.51] a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation,sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain.Yes,it was the famous Father Mapple,
[00:24.27] so called by the whalemen,among whom he was a very great favourite.He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth,
[00:32.15] but for many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry.At the time I now write of,Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age;
[00:41.42] that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth,for among all the fissures of his wrinkles,
[00:48.45] there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom ªthe spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February's snow.
[00:57.41] No one having previously heard his history,could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost interest,
[01:05.01] because there were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him,imputable to that adventurous maritime life he had led.
[01:13.43] When he entered I observed that he carried no umbrella,and certainly had not come in his carriage,for his tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet,
[01:22.33] and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had absorbed.
[01:30.08] However,hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed,and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner;when,arrayed in a decent suit,he quietly approached the pulpit.
[01:42.54] Like most old fashioned pulpits,it was a very lofty one,and since a regular stairs to such a height would,by its long angle with the floor,
[01:52.09] seriously contract the already small area of the chapel,the architect,it seemed,had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple,and finished the pulpit without a stairs,
[02:02.42] substituting a perpendicular side ladder,like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea.The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man ropes for this ladder,
[02:16.18] which,being itself nicely headed,and stained with a mahogany colour,the whole contrivance,considering what manner of chapel it was,
[02:24.15] seemed by no means in bad taste.Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder,and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the man ropes,
[02:34.09] Father Mapple cast a look upwards,and then with a truly sailor like but still reverential dexterity,hand over hand,mounted the steps as if ascending the main top of his vessel.
[02:46.46] The perpendicular parts of this side ladder,as is usually the case with swinging ones,were of cloth covered rope,
[02:54.04] only the rounds were of wood,so that at every step there was a joint.At my first glimpse of the pulpit,
[03:00.20] it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship,these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary.