Israel Potter

Israel Potter

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Israel Potter, by Herman Melville This eBook is for the
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Title: Israel Potter
Author: Herman Melville
Release Date: March 20, 2005 [EBook #15422]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ISRAEL POTTER
His Fifty Years of Exile
BY HERMAN MELVILLE
AUTHOR OF "TYPEE," "OMOO," ETC.
1855

Dedication
TO HIS HIGHNESS THE Bunker-Hill Monument
Biography, in its purer form, confined to the ended lives of the true and brave, may be
held the fairest meed of human virtue--one given and received in entire
disinterestedness--since neither can the biographer hope for acknowledgment from the
subject, nor the subject at all avail himself of the biographical distinction conferred.
Israel Potter well merits the present tribute--a private of Bunker Hill, who for his faithful
services was years ago promoted to a still deeper privacy under the ground, with a
posthumous pension, in default of any during life, annually paid him by the spring in
ever-new mosses and sward.
I am the more encouraged to lay this performance at the feet of your Highness, because,
with a change in the grammatical person, it preserves, almost as in a reprint, Israel
Potter's autobiographical story. Shortly after his return in infirm old age to his native land,
a little narrative of his adventures, forlornly published on sleazy gray paper, appeared
among the peddlers, written, probably, not by himself, but taken down from his lips by

another. But like the crutch-marks of the cripple by the Beautiful Gate, this blurred record
is now out of print. From a tattered copy, rescued by the merest chance from the
rag-pickers, the present account has been drawn, which, with the exception of some
expansions, and additions of historic and personal details, and one or two shiftings of
scene, may, perhaps, be not unfitly regarded something in the light of a dilapidated old
tombstone retouched.
Well aware that in your Highness' eyes the merit of the story must be in its general
fidelity to the main drift of the original narrative, I forbore anywhere to mitigate the hard
fortunes of my hero; and particularly towards the end, though sorely tempted, durst not
substitute for the allotment of Providence any artistic recompense of poetical justice; so
that no one can complain of the gloom of my closing chapters more profoundly than
myself.
Such is the work, and such, the man, that I have the honor to present to your Highness.
That the name here noted should not have appeared in the volumes of Sparks, may or
may not be a matter for astonishment; but Israel Potter seems purposely to have waited to
make his, popular advent under the present exalted patronage, seeing that your Highness,
according to the definition above, may, in the loftiest sense, be deemed the Great
Biographer: the national commemorator of such of the anonymous privates of June 17,
1775, who may never have received other requital than the solid reward of your granite.
Your Highness will pardon me, if, with the warmest ascriptions on this auspicious
occasion, I take the liberty to mingle my hearty congratulations on the recurrence of the
anniversary day we celebrate, wishing your Highness (though indeed your Highness be
somewhat prematurely gray) many returns of the same, and that each of its summer's suns
may shine as brightly on your brow as each winter snow shall lightly rest on the grave of
Israel Potter.
Your Highness' Most devoted and obsequious,
THE EDITOR.
JUNE 17th, 1854.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER
I. The birthplace of Israel
II. The youthful adventures of Israel
III. Israel goes to the wars; and reaching Bunker Hill in time to be of service there, soon
after is forced to extend his travels across the sea into the enemy's land
IV. Further wanderings of the Refugee, with some account of a good knight of Brentford
who befriended him
V. Israel in the Lion's Den
VI. Israel makes the acquaintance of certain secret friends of America, one of them being
the famous author of the "Diversions of Purley." These despatch him on a sly errand

across the Channel
VII. After a curious adventure upon the Pont Neuf, Israel enters the presence of the
renowned sage, Dr. Franklin, whom he finds right learnedly and multifariously employed
VIII. Which has something to say about Dr. Franklin and the Latin Quarter
IX. Israel is initiated into the mysteries of lodging-houses in the Latin Quarter
X. Another adventurer