This is turning out to be much more enjoyable—and #relatable-content than I thought. (Oh, "Moby Dick", the classic? Must be some fusty ol' tome that only the masturbatory would congratulate themselves on being able to quote from!)

As Nathaniel Philbrick puts it in one of those interminable forewords from a Penguin edition,

What’s more, he insists, he is not alone: “If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.” As proof, he describes the city of New York on a Sunday afternoon, its cooped-up inhabitants lingering on the waterfront, looking out longingly toward the sea in search of “the ungraspable phantom of life.”

Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach?

Hard to imagine a poet giving up a coat to come to Rockaway Beach given that we sail there on the regular. But I suppose it must have its own exotic charm to the unacquainted.