Many—perhaps most—of the characters in the collected stories are bachelors, that is, widowers or men who have never married. Examples include Bartleby, Jimmy Rose, the Marquis de Grandvin, John Gentian, John Marr, Daniel Orme, and Billy Budd. If seamen, bachelors are typically excellent physical and nautical specimens; if not seamen, they are usually much devoted to philosophy, the arts, smoking, and wine drinking. Melville seems to consider bachelors of middle-age or advanced years as particularly noteworthy examples of philosophic men—the type recurs with great frequency in Melville's work.