This is a story by Herman Melville, and I've just started it. But the word "husk" and "husky" is interesting. I first learned the word in one of James Herriot's veterinary stories, describing coughing of cows with a particular parasite causing bronchial irritation, the disease being called "husk".
"Copying law papers being proverbially a dry, husky sort of business, my two scriveners were fain to moisten their mouths very often with Spitzenbergs to be had at the numerous stalls nigh the Custom House and Post Office