How It's Used

“And when reaching out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was locked, Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck’s plate towards him, the mate received his meat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly; and a little started if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate; and chewed it noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not conversation; only he himself was dumb.”

“From the Middle Ages, Trier was a significant political force, and its archbishop was one of the seven Electors of the Holy Roman Empire—the loose, shifting German alliance that endured from the mid-10th to the early-19th century.”

“Made around 1585 in Augsburg, Germany, by Hans Schlottheim, [the clock] is really an automaton, and a work of genius. David Thompson, the curator, describes it thus: ‘It has a quarter and full hour striking clock which is to be wound every 24 hours. Above are three masts, in the crow's nests of which sailors revolve and strike the quarters and hours with hammers on the bells. Inside, the Holy Roman Emperor sits on the Imperial throne, and in front of him pass the seven electors with heralds, paying homage as they receive their fiefs. Ten trumpeters and a kettle-drummer alternately announce the banquet. A drummer and three guardsmen and 16 small cannon, 11 of which may be loaded, fire automatically.’”

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