"The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live in, in all New England..nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like houses, parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford.all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea." H. Melville, "Moby-Dick"