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"Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street " (1853)
Herman Melville

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  Prepared by Ann Woodlief, Virginia Commonwealth University

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   I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty
   years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem
   an interesting and somewhat singular set of men of whom as yet nothing
   that I know of has ever been written:-- I mean the law-copyists or
   scriveners. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately,
   and if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which good-natured
   gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the
   biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of
   Bartleby, who was a scrivener the strangest I ever saw or heard of. While
   of other law-copyists I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing
   of that sort can be done. I believe that no materials exist for a full and
   satisfactory biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to
   literature. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is
   ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are
   very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I
   know of him, except, indeed, one vague report which will appear in the
   sequel.

   Ere introducing the scrivener, as he first appeared to me, it is fit I
   make some mention of myself, my employees, my business, my chambers, and
   general surroundings; because some such description is indispensable to an
   adequate understanding of the chief character about to be presented.

   Imprimis: I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a
   profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.. Hence,
   though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even
   to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to
   invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses
   a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool
   tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men's bonds
   and mortgages and title-deeds. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage
   little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my
   first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in
   vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my
   profession by the last John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to
   repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like
   unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late
   John Jacob Astor's good opinion.

   Some time prior to the period at which this little history begins, my
   avocations had been largely increased. The good old office, now extinct in
   the State of New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred upon
   me. It was not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly remunerative. I
   seldom lose my temper; much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation
   at wrongs and outrages; but I must be permitted to be rash here and
   declare, that I consider the sudden and violent abrogation of the office
   of Master of Chancery, by the new Constitution, as a----premature act;
   inasmuch as I had counted upon a life-lease of the profits, whereas I only
   received those of a few short years. But this is by the way.

   My chambers were up stairs at No.--Wall-street. At one end they looked
   upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft,
   penetrating the building from top to bottom. This view might have been
   considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in what landscape
   painters call "life." But if so, the view from the other end of my
   chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing more. In that direction
   my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall,black by
   age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spy-glass to bring out
   its lurking beauties, but for the benefit of all near-sighted spectators,
   was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes. Owing to the great
   height of the surrounding buildings, and my chambers being on the second
   floor, the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a
   huge square cistern.

   At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I had two persons as
   copyists in my employment, and a promising lad as an office-boy. First,
   Turkey; second, Nippers; third, Ginger Nut.These may seem names, the like
   of which are not usually found in the Directory. In truth they were
   nicknames, mutually conferred upon each other by my three clerks, and were
   deemed expressive of their respective persons or characters. Turkey was a
   short, pursy Englishman of about my own age, that is, somewhere not far
   from sixty. In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid
   hue, but after twelve o'clock, meridian-- his dinner hour-- it blazed like
   a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing--but, as it were,
   with a gradual wane--till 6 o'clock, P.M. or thereabouts, after which I
   saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which gaining its meridian with
   the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the
   following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory. There are
   many singular coincidences I have known in the course of my life, not the
   least among which was the fact that exactly when Turkey displayed his
   fullest beams from his red and radiant countenance, just then, too, at the
   critical moment, began the daily period when I considered his business
   capacities as seriously disturbed for the remainder of the twenty-four
   hours. Not that he was absolutely idle, or averse to business then; far
   from it. The difficulty was, he was apt to be altogether too energetic.
   There was a strange, inflamed, flurried, flighty recklessness of activity
   about him. He would be incautious in dipping his pen into his inkstand.
   All his blots upon my documents, were dropped there after twelve o'clock,
   meridian. Indeed, not only would he be reckless and sadly given to making
   blots in the afternoon, but some days he went further, and was rather
   noisy. At such times, too, his face flamed with augmented blazonry, as if
   cannel coal had been heaped on anthracite. He made an unpleasant racket
   with his chair; spilled his sand-box; in mending his pens, impatiently
   split them all to pieces, and threw them on the floor in a sudden passion;
   stood up and leaned over his table, boxing his papers about in a most
   indecorous manner, very sad to behold in an elderly manlike him.
   Nevertheless, as he was in many ways a most valuable person to me, and all
   the time before twelve o'clock, meridian, was the quickest, steadiest
   creature too, accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easy to be
   matched--for these reasons, I was willingto overlook his eccentricities,
   though indeed, occasionally, I remonstrated with him. I did this very
   gently, however, because, though the civilest, nay, the blandest and most
   reverential of men in the morning, yet in the afternoon he was disposed,
   upon provocation, to be slightly rash with his tongue, in fact, insolent.
   Now, valuing his morning services as I did, and resolved not to lose them;
   yet, at the same time made uncomfortable by his inflamed ways after twelve
   o'clock; and being a man of peace, unwilling by my admonitions to call
   forth unseemingly retorts from him; I took upon me, one Saturday noon (he
   was always worse on Saturdays), to hint to him, very kindly, that perhaps
   now that he was growing old, it might be well to abridge his labors; in
   short, he need not come to my chambers after twelve o'clock, but, dinner
   over, had best go home to his lodgings and rest himself till tea-time. But
   no; he insisted upon his afternoon devotions. His countenance became
   intolerably fervid, as he oratorically assured me--gesticulating with a
   long ruler at the other end of the room--that if his services in the
   morning were useful, how indispensible, then, in the afternoon?

   "With submission, sir," said Turkey on this occasion, "I consider myself
   your right-hand man. In the morning I but marshal and deploy my columns;
   but in the afternoon I put myself at their head, and gallantly charge the
   foe, thus!"--and he made a violent thrust with the ruler.

   "But the blots, Turkey," intimated I.

   "True,--but, with submission, sir, behold these hairs! I am getting old.
   Surely, sir, a blot or two of a warm afternoon is not the page--is
   honorable. With submission, sir, we both are getting old."

   This appeal to my fellow-feeling was hardly to be resisted. At all events,
   I saw that go he would not. So I made up my mind to let him stay,
   resolving, nevertheless, to see to it, that during the afternoon he had to
   do with my less important papers.

   Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the
   whole, rather piratical-looking young man of about five and twenty. I
   always deemed him the victim of two evil powers-- ambition and
   indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the
   duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly
   profession affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal documents.
   The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous testiness and
   grinning irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind together over
   mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary maledictions, hissed, rather
   than spoken, in the heat of business; and especially by a continual
   discontent with the height of the table where he worked. Though of a very
   ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers could never get this table to suit him.
   He put chips under it, blocks of various sorts, bits of pasteboard, and at
   last went so far as to attempt an exquisite adjustment by final pieces of
   folded blotting-paper. But no invention would answer. If, for the sake of
   easing his back, he brought the table lid at a sharp angle well up towards
   his chin, and wrote there like a man using the steep roof of a Dutch house
   for his desk:--then he declared that it stopped the circulation in his
   arms. If now he lowered the table to his waistbands, and stooped over it
   in writing, then there was a sore aching in his back. In short, the truth
   of the matter was, Nippers knew not what he wanted. Or, if he wanted
   anything, it was to be rid of a scrivener's table altogether. Among the
   manifestations of his diseased ambition was a fondness he had for
   receiving visits from certain ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats,
   whom he called his clients. Indeed I was aware that not only was he, at
   times, considerable of a ward-politician, but he occasionally did a little
   businessat the Justices' courts, and was not unknown on the steps of the
   Tombs. I have good reason to believe, however, that one individual who
   called upon him at my chambers, and who, with a grand air, he insisted was
   his client, was no other than a dun, and the alleged title-deed, a bill.
   But with all his failings, and the annoyances he caused me, Nippers, like
   his compatriot Turkey, was a very useful man to me; wrote a neat, swift
   hand; and, when he chose, was not deficient in a gentlemanly sort of
   deportment. Added to this, he always dressedin a gentlemanly sort of way;
   and so, incidentally, reflected credit upon my chambers. Whereas with
   respect to Turkey, I had much ado to keep him from being a reproach to me.
   His clothes were apt to look oily and smell of eating-houses. He wore his
   pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer. His coats were execrable; his
   hat not to be handled. But while the hat was a thing of indifference to
   me, inasmuch as his natural civility and deference, as a dependent
   Englishman, always led him to doff it the moment he entered the room, yet
   his coat was another matter. Concerning his coats, I reasoned with him;
   but with no effect. The truth was, I suppose, that a man with so small an
   income, could not afford to sport such a lustrous face and a lustrous coat
   at one and the same time. As Nippers once observed, Turkey's money went
   chiefly for red ink. One winter day I presented Turkey with a
   highly-respectable looking coat of my own, a padded gray coat, of a most
   comfortable warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee to the
   neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate the favor, and abate his rashness
   and obstreperousness of afternoons. But no. I verily believe that
   buttoning himself up in so downy and blanket-like a coat had a pernicious
   effect upon him; upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for
   horses. In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse is said to feel his
   oats, so Turkey felt his coat. It made him insolent. He was a man whom
   prosperity harmed.

   Though concerning the self-indulgent habits of Turkey I had my own private
   surmises, yet touching Nippers I was well persuaded that whatever might be
   his faults in other respects, he was, at least, a temperate young man. But
   indeed, nature herself seemed to have been his vintner, and at his birth
   charged him so thoroughly with an irritable, brandy-like disposition, that
   all subsequent potations were needless. When I consider how, amid the
   stillness of my chambers, Nippers would sometimes impatiently rise from
   his seat, and stooping over his table, spread his arms wide apart, seize
   the whole desk, and move it, and jerk it, with a grim, grinding motion on
   the floor, as if the table were a perverse voluntary agent, intent on
   thwarting and vexing him; I plainly perceive that for Nippers, brandy and
   water were altogether superfluous.

   It was fortunate for me that, owing to its course--indigestion--the
   irritability and consequent nervousness of Nippers, were mainly observable
   in the morning, while in the afternoon he was comparatively mild. So that
   Turkey's paroxysms only coming on about twelve o'clock, I never had to do
   with their eccentricities at one time. Their fits relieved each other like
   guards. When Nippers' was on, Turkey's was off, and vice versa. This was a
   good natural arrangement under the circumstances.

   Ginger Nut, the third on my list, was a lad some twelve years old. His
   father was a carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of a
   cart, before he died. So he sent him to my office as a student at law,
   errand boy, and cleaner and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week. He
   had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much. Upon inspection,
   the drawer exhibited a great array of the shells of various sorts of nuts.
   Indeed, to this quick-witted youth the whole noble science of the law was
   contained in a nut-shell. Not the least among the employments of Ginger
   Nut, as well as one which he discharged with the most alacrity, was his
   duty as cake and apple purveyor for Turkey and Nippers. 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. Also, they sent
   Ginger Nut very frequently for that peculiar cake--small, flat, round, and
   very spicy--after which he had been named by them. Of a cold morning when
   business was but dull, Turkey would gobble up scores of these cakes, as if
   they were mere wafers--indeed they sell them at the rate of six or eight
   for a penny--the scrape of his pen blending with the crunching of the
   crisp particles in his mouth. Of all the fiery afternoon blunders and
   flurried rashnesses of Turkey, was his once moistening a ginger-cake
   between his lips, and clapping it on to a mortgage for a seal. I came
   within an ace of dismissing him then. But he mollified me by making an
   oriental bow, and saying--"With submission, sir, it was generous of me to
   find you in stationery on my own account."

   Now my original business--that of a conveyancer and title hunter, and
   drawer-up of recondite documents of all sorts--was considerably increased
   by receiving the master's office. There was now great work for scriveners.
   Not only must I push the clerks already with me, but I must have
   additional help. In answer to my advertisement, a motionless young man one
   morning, stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was
   summer. I can see that figure now--pallidly neat, pitiably respectable,
   incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby.

   After a few words touching his qualifications, I engaged him, glad to have
   among my corps of copyists a man of so singularly sedate an aspect, which
   I thought might operate beneficially upon the flighty temper of Turkey,
   and the fiery one of Nippers.

   I should have stated before that ground glass folding-doors divided my
   premises into two parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners, the
   other by myself. According to my humor I threw open these doors, or closed
   them. I resolved to assign Bartleby a corner by the folding-doors, but on
   my side of them, so as to have this quiet man within easy call, in case
   any trifling thing was to be done. I placed his desk close up to a small
   side window in that part of the room, a window which originally had
   afforded a lateral view of certain grimy back-yards and bricks, but which,
   owing to subsequent erections, commanded at present no view at all, though
   it gave some light. Within three feet of the panes was a wall, and the
   light came down from far above, between two lofty buildings, as from a
   very small opening in a dome. Still further to a satisfactory arrangement,
   I procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely isolate
   Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from my voice. And thus, in
   a manner, privacy and society were conjoined.

   At first Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long
   famishingfor something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my
   documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line,
   copying by sun-light and by candle-light. I should have been quite
   delighted with his application, had be been cheerfully industrious. But he
   wrote on silently, palely, mechanically.

   It is, of course, an indispensable part of a scrivener's business to
   verify the accuracy of his copy, word by word. Where there are two or more
   scriveners in an office, they assist each other in this examination, one
   reading from the copy, the other holding the original. It is a very dull,
   wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some
   sanguine temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I
   cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat
   down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages,
   closely written in a crimpy hand.

   Now and then, in the haste of business, it had been my habit to assist in
   comparing some brief document myself, calling Turkey or Nippers for this
   purpose. One object I had in placing Bartleby so handy to me behind the
   screen, was to avail myself of his services on such trivial occasions. It
   was on the third day, I think, of his being with me, and before any
   necessity had arisen for having his own writing examined, that, being much
   hurried to complete a small affair I had in hand, I abruptly called to
   Bartleby. In my haste and natural expectancy of instant compliance, I sat
   with my head bent over the original on my desk, and my right hand
   sideways, and somewhat nervously extended with the copy, so that
   immediately upon emerging from his retreat, Bartleby might snatch it and
   proceed to business without the least delay.

   In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what
   it was I wanted him to do--namely, to examine a small paper with me.
   Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his
   privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied,"I would
   prefer not to."

   I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties.
   Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby
   had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the
   clearest tone I could assume. But in quite as clear a one came the
   previous reply, "I would prefer not to."

   "Prefer not to," echoed I, rising in high excitement, and crossing the
   room with a stride, "What do you mean? Are you moon-struck? I want you to
   help me compare this sheet here--take it," and I thrust it towards him.

   "I would prefer not to," said he.

   I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly composed; his gray eye
   dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him. Had there been the
   least uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner; in
   other words, had there been any thing ordinarily human about him,
   doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But as
   it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster-of-paris
   bust of Cicero out of doors. I stood gazing at him awhile, as he went on
   with his own writing, and then reseated myself at my desk. This is very
   strange, thought I. What had one best do? But my business hurried me. I
   concluded to forget the matter for the present, reserving it for my future
   leisure. So calling Nippers from the other room, the paper was speedily
   examined.

   A few days after this, Bartleby concluded four lengthy documents, being
   quadruplicates of a week's testimony taken before me in my High Court of
   Chancery. It became necessary to examine them. It was an important suit,
   and great accuracy was imperative. Having all things arranged I called
   Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut from the next room, meaning to place the
   four copies in the hands of my four clerks, while I should read from the
   original. Accordingly Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut had taken their seats
   in a row, each with his document in hand, when I called to Bartleby to
   join this interesting group.

   "Bartleby! quick, I am waiting."

   I heard a low scrape of his chair legs on the unscraped floor, and soon he
   appeared standing at the entrance of his hermitage.

   "What is wanted?" said he mildly.

   "The copies, the copies," said I hurriedly. "We are going to examine them.
   There"--and I held towards him the fourth quadruplicate.

   "I would prefer not to," he said, and gently disappeared behind the
   screen.

   For a few moments I was turned into a pillar of salt, standing at the head
   of my seated column of clerks. Recovering myself, I advanced towards the
   screen, and demanded the reason for such extraordinary conduct.

   "Why do you refuse?"

   "I would prefer not to."

   With any other man I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion,
   scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence.
   But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed
   me, but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me. I began to
   reason with him.

   "These are your own copies we are about to examine. It is labor saving to
   you, because one examination will answer for your four papers. It is
   common usage. Every copyist is bound to help examine his copy. Is it not
   so? Will you not speak? Answer!"

   "I prefer not to," he replied in a flute-like tone. It seemed to me that
   while I had been addressing him, he carefully revolved every statement
   that I made; fully comprehended the meaning; could not gainsay the
   irresistible conclusion; but, at the same time, some paramount
   consideration prevailed with him to reply as he did.

   "You are decided, then, not to comply with my request--a request made
   according to common usage and common sense?"

   He briefly gave me to understand that on that point my judgment was sound.
   Yes: his decision was irreversible.

   It is not seldom the case that when a man is browbeaten in some
   unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in his
   own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that,
   wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the other
   side. Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he turns to
   them for some reinforcement for his own faltering mind.

   "Turkey," said I, "what do you think of this? Am I not right?"

   "With submission, sir," said Turkey, with his blandest tone, "I think that
   you are."

   "Nippers," said I, "what do you think of it?"

   "I think I should kick him out of the office."

   (The reader of nice perceptions will here perceive that, it being morning,
   Turkey's answer is couched in polite and tranquil terms, but Nippers
   replies in ill-tempered ones. Or, to repeat a previous sentence, Nipper's
   ugly mood was on duty, and Turkey's off.)

   "Ginger Nut," said I, willing to enlist the smallest suffrage in my
   behalf, "what do you think of it?"

   "I think, sir, he's a little luny," replied Ginger Nut, with a grin.

   "You hear what they say," said I, turning towards the screen, "come forth
   and do your duty."

   But he vouchsafed no reply. I pondered a moment in sore perplexity. But
   once more business hurried me. I determined again to postpone the
   consideration of this dilemma to my future leisure. With a little trouble
   we made out to examine the papers without Bartleby, though at every page
   or two, Turkey deferentially dropped his opinion that this proceeding was
   quite out of the common; while Nippers, twitching in his chair with a
   dyspeptic nervousness, ground out between his set teeth occasional hissing
   maledictions against the stubborn oaf behind the screen. And for his
   (Nipper's) part, this was the first and the last time he would do another
   man's business without pay.

   Meanwhile Bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to every thing but his
   own peculiar business there.

   Some days passed, the scrivener being employed upon another lengthy work.
   His late remarkable conduct led me to regard his way narrowly. I observed
   that he never went to dinner; indeed that he never went any where. As yet
   I had never of my personal knowledge known him to be outside of my office.
   He was a perpetual sentry in the corner. At about eleven o'clock though,
   in the morning, I noticed that Ginger Nut would advance toward the opening
   in Bartleby's screen, as if silently beckoned thither by a gesture
   invisible to me where I sat. That boy would then leave the office jingling
   a few pence, and reappear with a handful of ginger-nuts which he delivered
   in the hermitage, receiving two of the cakes for his trouble.

   He lives, then, on ginger-nuts, thought I; never eats a dinner, properly
   speaking; he must be a vegetarian then, but no; he never eats even
   vegetables, he eats nothing but ginger-nuts. My mind then ran on in
   reveries concerning the probable effects upon the human constitution of
   living entirely on ginger-nuts. Ginger-nuts are so called because they
   contain ginger as one of their peculiar constituents, and the final
   flavoring one. Now what was ginger? A hot, spicy thing. Was Bartleby hot
   and spicy? Not at all. Ginger, then, had no effect upon Bartleby. Probably
   he preferred it should have none.

   Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the
   individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting one
   perfectly harmless in his passivity; then, in the better moods of the
   former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination what
   proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the most
   part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he means
   no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence; his aspect sufficiently
   evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary. He is useful to me. I can
   get along with him. If I turn him away, the chances are he will fall in
   with some less indulgent employer, and then he will be rudely treated, and
   perhaps driven forth miserably to starve. Yes. Here I can cheaply purchase
   a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his
   strange willfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my
   soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience. But this
   mood was not invariable with me. The passiveness of Bartleby sometimes
   irritated me. I felt strangely goaded on to encounter him in new
   opposition, to elicit some angry spark from him answerable to my own. But
   indeed I might as well have essayed to strike fire with my knuckles
   against a bit of Windsor soap. But one afternoon the evil impulse in me
   mastered me, and the following little scene ensued:

   "Bartleby," said I, "when those papers are all copied, I will compare them
   with you."

   "I would prefer not to."

   "How? Surely you do not mean to persist in that mulish vagary?"

   No answer.

   I threw open the folding-doors near by, and turning upon Turkey and
   Nippers, exclaimed in an excited manner--

   "He says, a second time, he won't examine his papers. What do you think of
   it, Turkey?"

   It was afternoon, be it remembered. Turkey sat glowing like a brass
   boiler, his bald head steaming, his hands reeling among his blotted
   papers.

   "Think of it?" roared Turkey; "I think I'll just step behind his screen,
   and black his eyes for him!"

   So saying, Turkey rose to his feet and threw his arms into a pugilistic
   position. He was hurrying away to make good his promise, when I detained
   him, alarmed at the effect of incautiously rousing Turkey's combativeness
   after dinner.

   "Sit down, Turkey," said I, "and hear what Nippers has to say. What do you
   think of it, Nippers? Would I not be justified in immediately dismissing
   Bartleby?"

   "Excuse me, that is for you to decide, sir. I think his conduct quite
   unusual, and indeed unjust, as regards Turkey and myself. But it may only
   be a passing whim."

   "Ah," exclaimed I, "you have strangely changed your mind then--you speak
   very gently of him now."

   "All beer," cried Turkey; "gentleness is effects of beer--Nippers and I
   dined together to-day. You see how gentle I am, sir. Shall I go and black
   his eyes?"

   "You refer to Bartleby, I suppose. No, not to-day, Turkey," I replied;
   "pray, put up your fists."

   I closed the doors, and again advanced towards Bartleby. I felt additional
   incentives tempting me to my fate. I burned to be rebelled against again.
   I remembered that Bartleby never left the office.

   "Bartleby," said I, "Ginger Nut is away; just step round to the Post
   Office, won't you? (it was but a three minutes walk,) and see if there is
   any thing for me."

   "I would prefer not to."

   "You will not?"

   "I prefer not."

   I staggered to my desk, and sat there in a deep study. My blind inveteracy
   returned. Was there any other thing in which I could procure myself to be
   ignominiously repulsed by this lean, penniless with?--my hired clerk? What
   added thing is there, perfectly reasonable, that he will be sure to refuse
   to do?

   "Bartleby!"

   No answer.

   "Bartleby," in a louder tone.

   No answer.

   "Bartleby," I roared.

   Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the
   third summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage.

   "Go to the next room, and tell Nippers to come to me."

   "I prefer not to," he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly
   disappeared.

   "Very good, Bartleby," said I, in a quiet sort of serenely severe
   self-possessed tone, intimating the unalterable purpose of some terrible
   retribution very close at hand. At the moment I half intended something of
   the kind. But upon the whole, as it was drawing towards my dinner-hour, I
   thought it best to put on my hat and walk home for the day, suffering much
   from perplexity and distress of mind.

   Shall I acknowledge it? The conclusion of this whole business was that it
   soon became a fixed fact of my chambers, that a pale young scrivener, by
   the name of Bartleby, had a desk there; that he copied for me at the usual
   rate of four cents a folio (one hundred words); but he was permanently
   exempt from examining the work done by him, that duty being transferred to
   Turkey and Nippers, one of compliment doubtless to their superior
   acuteness; moreover, said Bartleby was never on any account to be
   dispatched on the most trivial errand of any sort; and that even if
   entreated to take upon him such a matter, it was generally understood that
   he would prefer not to--in other words, that he would refuse point-blank.

   32 As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled to Bartleby. His
   steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry
   (except when he chose to throw himself into a standing revery behind his
   screen), his great stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under all
   circumstances, made him a valuable acquisition. One prime thing was
   this,--he was always there;--first in the morning, continually through the
   day, and the last at night. I had a singular confidence in his honesty. I
   felt my most precious papers perfectly safe in his hands. Sometimes to be
   sure I could not, for the very soul of me, avoid falling into sudden
   spasmodic passions with him. For it was exceeding difficult to bear in
   mind all the time those strange peculiarities, privileges, and unheard of
   exemptions, forming the tacit stipulations on Bartleby's part under which
   he remained in my office. Now and then, in the eagerness of dispatching
   pressing business, I would inadvertently summon Bartleby, in a short,
   rapid tone, to put his finger, say, on the incipient tie of a bit of red
   tape with which I was about compressing some papers. Of course, from
   behind the screen the usual answer, "I prefer not to," was sure to come;
   and then, how could a human creature with the common infirmities of our
   nature, refrain from bitterly exclaiming upon such perverseness--such
   unreasonableness. However, every added repulse of this sort which I
   received only tended to lessen the probability of my repeating the
   inadvertence.

   Here is must be said, that according to the custom of most legal gentlemen
   occupying chambers in densely-populated law buildings, there were several
   keys to my door. One was kept by a woman residing in the attic, which
   person weekly scrubbed and daily swept and dusted my apartments. Another
   was kept by Turkey for convenience sake. The third I sometimes carried in
   my own pocket. The fourth I knew not who had.

   Now, one Sunday morning I happened to go to Trinity Church, to hear a
   celebrated preacher, and finding myself rather early on the ground, I
   thought I would walk round to my chambers for a while. Luckily I had my
   key with me; but upon applying it to the lock, I found it resisted by
   something inserted from the inside. Quite surprised, I called out; when to
   my consternation a key was turned from within; and thrusting his lean
   visage at me, and holding the door ajar, the apparition of Bartleby
   appeared, in his shirt sleeves, and otherwise in a strangely tattered
   dishabille, saying quietly that he was sorry, but he was deeply engaged
   just then, and--preferred not admitting me at present. In a brief word or
   two, he moreover added, that perhaps I had better walk round the block two
   or three times, and by that time he would probably have concluded his
   affairs. Now, the utterly unsurmised appearance of Bartleby, tenanting my
   law-chambers of a Sunday morning, with his cadaverously gentlemanly
   nonchalance, yet withal firm and self-possessed, had such a strange effect
   upon me, that incontinently I slunk away from my own door, and did as
   desired. But not without sundry twinges of impotent rebellion against the
   mild effrontery of this unaccountable scrivener. Indeed, it was his
   wonderful mildness chiefly, which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me,
   as it were. For I consider that one, for the time, is a sort of unmanned
   when he tranquilly permits his hired clerk to dictate to him, and order
   him away from his own premises. Furthermore, I was full of uneasiness as
   to what Bartleby could possibly be doing in my office in his shirt
   sleeves, and in an otherwise dismantled condition of a Sunday morning. Was
   any thing amiss going on? Nay, that was out of the question. It was not to
   be thought of for a moment that Bartleby was an immoral person. But what
   could he be doing there?--copying? Nay again, whatever might be his
   eccentricities, Bartleby was an eminently decorous person. He would be the
   last man to sit down to his desk in any state approaching to nudity.
   Besides, it was Sunday; and there was something about Bartleby that
   forbade the supposition that we would by any secular occupation violate
   the proprieties of the day.

   Nevertheless, my mind was not pacified; and full of a restless curiosity,
   at last I returned to the door. Without hindrance I inserted my key,
   opened it, and entered. Bartleby was not to be seen. I looked round
   anxiously, peeped behind his screen; but it was very plain that he was
   gone. Upon more closely examining the place, I surmised that for an
   indefinite period Bartleby must have ate, dressed, and slept in my office,
   and that too without plate, mirror, or bed. The cushioned seat of a
   rickety old sofa in one corner bore t faint impress of a lean, reclining
   form. Rolled away under his desk, I found a blanket; under the empty
   grate, a blacking box and brush; on a chair, a tin basin, with soap and a
   ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of ginger-nuts and a morsel of
   cheese. Yet, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby has been making
   his home here, keeping bachelor's hallall by himself. Immediately then the
   thought came sweeping across me, What miserable friendlessness and
   loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, how
   horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall-street is deserted as Petra; and
   every night of every day it is an emptiness. This building too, which of
   week-days hums with industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer
   vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his
   home; sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous--a sort
   of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!

   For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging
   melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a
   not-unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me
   irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby
   were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had
   seen that day in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of
   Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to
   myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but
   misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. These sad
   fancyings-- chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly brain--led on to
   other and more special thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of
   Bartleby. Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me. The
   scrivener's pale form appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers,
   in its shivering winding sheet.

   Suddenly I was attracted by Bartleby's closed desk, the key in open sight
   left in the lock.

   I mean no mischief, seek the gratification of no heartless curiosity,
   thought I; besides, the desk is mine, and its contents too, so I will make
   bold to look within. Every thing was methodically arranged, the papers
   smoothly placed. The pigeon holes were deep, and removing the files of
   documents, I groped into their recesses. Presently I felt something there,
   and dragged it out. It was an old bandanna handkerchief, heavy and
   knotted. I opened it, and saw it was a savings' bank.

   I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted in the man. I
   remembered that he never spoke but to answer; that though at intervals he
   had considerable time to himself, yet I had never seen him reading--no,
   not even a newspaper; that for long periods he would stand looking out, at
   his pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall; I was quite
   sure he never visited any refectory or eating house; while his pale face
   clearly indicated that he never drank beer like Turkey, or tea and coffee
   even, like other men; that he never went any where in particular that I
   could learn; never went out for a walk, unless indeed that was the case at
   present; that he had declined telling who he was, or whence he came, or
   whether he had any relatives in the world; that though so thin and pale,
   he never complained of ill health. And more than all, I remembered a
   certain unconscious air of pallid--how shall I call it?--of pallid
   haughtiness, say, or rather an austere reserve about him, which had
   positively awed me into my tame compliance with his eccentricities, when I
   had feared to ask him to do the slightest incidental thing for me, even
   though I might know, from his long-continued motionlessness, that behind
   his screen he must be standing in one of those dead-wall reveries of his.

   Revolving all these things, and coupling them with the recently discovered
   fact that he made my office his constant abiding place and home, and not
   forgetful of his morbid moodiness; revolving all these things, a
   prudential feeling began to steal over me. My first emotions had been
   those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the
   forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same
   melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and
   so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery
   enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that
   point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing
   to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a
   certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a
   sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived
   that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul
   be rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was
   the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his
   body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and
   his soul I could not reach.

   I did not accomplish the purpose of going to Trinity Church that morning.
   Somehow, the things I had seen disqualified me for the time from
   church-going. I walked homeward, thinking what I would do with Bartleby.
   Finally, I resolvedupon this;--I would put certain calm questions to him
   the next morning, touching his history, &c., and if he declined to answer
   then openly and reservedly (and I supposed he would prefer not), then to
   give him a twenty dollar bill over and above whatever I might owe him, and
   tell him his services were no longer required; but that if in any other
   way I could assist him, I would be happy to do so, especially if he
   desired to return to his native place, wherever that might be, I would
   willingly help to defray the expenses. Moreover, if after reaching home,
   he found himself at any time in want of aid, a letter from him would be
   sure of a reply.

   The next morning came.

   "Bartleby," said I, gently calling to him behind the screen.

   No reply.

   "Bartleby," said I, in a still gentler tone, "come here; I am not going to
   ask you to do any thing you would prefer not to do--I simply wish to speak
   to you."

   Upon this he noiselessly slid into view.

   "Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born?"

   "I would prefer not to."

   "Will you tell me anything about yourself?"

   "I would prefer not to."

   "But what reasonable objection can you have to speak to me? I feel
   friendly towards you."

   He did not look at me while I spoke, but kept his glance fixed upon my
   bust of Cicero, which as I then sat, was directly behind me, some six
   inches above my head. "What is your answer, Bartleby?" said I, after
   waiting a considerable time for a reply, during which his countenance
   remained immovable, only there was the faintest conceivable tremor of the
   white attenuated mouth.

   "At present I prefer to give no answer," he said, and retired into his
   hermitage.

   It was rather weak in me I confess, but his manner on this occasion
   nettled me. Not only did there seem to lurk in it a certain disdain, but
   his perverseness seemed ungrateful, considering the undeniable good usage
   and indulgence he had received from me.

   Again I sat ruminating what I should do.Mortified as I was at his
   behavior, and resolved as I had been to dismiss him when I entered my
   office, nevertheless I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at
   my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for
   a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornest of
   mankind. At last, familiarly drawing my chair behind his screen, I sat
   down and said: "Bartleby, never mind then about revealing your history;
   but let me entreat you, as a friend, to comply as far as may be with the
   usages of this office. Say now you will help to examine papers tomorrow or
   next day: in short, say now that in a day or two you will begin to be a
   little reasonable:--say so, Bartleby."

   "At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable was his idly
   cadaverous reply.,"

   Just then the folding-doors opened, and Nippers approached. He seemed
   suffering from an unusually bad night's rest, induced by severer
   indigestion than common. He overheard those final words of Bartleby.

   "Prefer not, eh?" gritted Nippers--"I'd prefer him, if I were you, sir,"
   addressing me--"I'd prefer him; I'd give him preferences, the stubborn
   mule! What is it, sir, pray, that he prefers not to do now?"

   Bartleby moved not a limb.

   "Mr. Nippers," said I, "I'd prefer that you would withdraw for the
   present."

   Somehow, of late I had got into the way of involuntary using this word
   "prefer" upon all sorts of not exactly suitable occasions. And I trembled
   to think that my contact with the scrivener had already and seriously
   affected me in a mental way. And what further and deeper aberration might
   it not yet produce? This apprehension had not been without efficacy in
   determining me to summary means.

   As Nippers, looking very sour and sulky, was departing, Turkey blandly and
   deferentially approached.

   "With submission, sir," said he, "yesterday I was thinking about Bartleby
   here, and I think that if he would but prefer to take a quart of good ale
   every day, it would do much towards mending him, and enabling him to
   assist in examining his papers."

   "So you have got the word too," said I, slightly excited.

   "With submission, what word, sir," asked Turkey, respectfully crowding
   himself into the contracted space behind the screen, and by so doing,
   making me jostle the scrivener. "What word, sir?"

   "I would prefer to be left alone here," said Bartleby, as if offended at
   being mobbed in his privacy.

   "That's the word, Turkey," said I--"that's it."

   "Oh, prefer oh yes--queer word. I never use it myself. But, sir as I was
   saying, if he would but prefer--"

   "Turkey," interrupted I, "you will please withdraw."

   "Oh, certainly, sir, if you prefer that I should."

   As he opened the folding-door to retire, Nippers at his desk caught a
   glimpse of me, and asked whether I would prefer to have a certain paper
   copied on blue paper or white. He did not in the least roguishly accent
   the word prefer. It was plain that it involuntarily rolled from his
   tongue. I thought to myself, surely I must get rid of a demented man, who
   already has in some degree turned the tongues, if not the heads of myself
   and clerks. But I thought it prudent not to break the dismission at once.

   The next day I noticed that Bartleby did nothing but stand at his window
   in his dead-wall revery. Upon asking him why he did not write, he said
   that he had decided upon doing no more writing.

   "Why, how now? what next?" exclaimed I, "do no more writing?"

   "No more."

   "And what is the reason?"

   "Do you not see the reason for yourself," he indifferently replied.

   I looked steadfastly at him, and perceived that his eyes looked dull and
   glazed. Instantly it occurred to me, that his unexampled diligence in
   copying by his dim window for the first few weeks of his stay with me
   might have temporarily impaired his vision.

   I was touched. I said something in condolence with him. I hinted that of
   course he did wisely in abstaining from writing for a while; and urged him
   to embrace that opportunity of taking wholesome exercise in the open air.
   This, however, he did not do. A few days after this, my other clerks being
   absent, and being in a great hurry to dispatch certain letters by the
   mail, I thought that, having nothing else earthly to do, Bartleby would
   surely be less inflexible than usual, and carry these letters to the
   post-office. But he blankly declined. So, much to my inconvenience, I went
   myself.

   Still added days went by. Whether Bartleby's eyes improved or not, I could
   not say. To all appearance, I thought they did. But when I asked him if
   they did, he vouchsafed no answer. At all events, he would do no copying.
   At last, in reply to my urgings, he informed me that he had permanently
   given up copying.

   "What!" exclaimed I; "suppose your eyes should get entirely well- better
   than ever before--would you not copy then?"

   "I have given up copying," he answered, and slid aside.

   He remained as ever, a fixture in my chamber. Nay--if that were
   possible--he became still more of a fixture than before. What was to be
   done? He would do nothing in the office: why should he stay there? In
   plain fact, he had now become a millstone to me, not only useless as a
   necklace, but afflictive to bear. Yet I was sorry for him. I speak less
   than truth when I say that, on his own account, he occasioned me
   uneasiness. If he would but have named a single relative or friend, I
   would instantly have written, and urged their taking the poor fellow away
   to some convenient retreat. But he seemed alone, absolutely alone in the
   universe. A bit of wreck</font> in the mid Atlantic. At length,
   necessities connected with my business tyrannized over all other
   considerations. Decently as I could, I told Bartleby that in six days'
   time he must unconditionally leave the office. I warned him to take
   measures, in the interval, for procuring some other abode. I offered to
   assist him in this endeavor, if he himself would but take the first step
   towards a removal. "And when you finally quit me, Bartleby," added I, "I
   shall see that you go not away entirely unprovided. Six days from this
   hour, remember."

   At the expiration of that period, I peeped behind the screen, and lo!
   Bartleby was there.

   I buttoned up my coat, balanced myself; advanced slowly towards him,
   touched his shoulder, and said, "The time has come; you must quit this
   place; I am sorry for you; here is money; but you must go."

   "I would prefer not," he replied, with his back still towards me.

   "You must."

   He remained silent.

   Now I had an unbounded confidence in this man's common honesty. He had
   frequently restored to me six pences and shillings carelessly dropped upon
   the floor, for I am apt to be very reckless in such shirt-button affairs.
   The proceeding then which followed will not be deemed extraordinary.
   "Bartleby," said I, "I owe you twelve dollars on account; here are
   thirty-two; the odd twenty are yours.--Will you take it? and I handed the
   bills towards him.

   But he made no motion.

   "I will leave them here then," putting them under a weight on the table.
   Then taking my hat and cane and going to the door I tranquilly turned and
   added--"After you have removed your things from these offices, Bartleby,
   you will of course lock the door--since every one is now gone for the day
   but you--and if you please, slip your key underneath the mat, so that I
   may have it in the morning. I shall not see you again; so good-bye to you.
   If hereafter in your new place of abode I can be of any service to you, do
   not fail to advise me by letter. Good-bye, Bartleby, and fare you well."

   But he answered not a word; like the last column of some ruined temple, he
   remained standing mute and solitary in the middle of the otherwise
   deserted room.

   As I walked home in a pensive mood, my vanity got the better of my pity. I
   could not but highly plume myself on my masterly management in getting rid
   of Bartleby. Masterly I call it, and such it must appear to any
   dispassionate thinker. The beauty of my procedure seemed to consist in its
   perfect quietness. There was no vulgar bullying, no bravado of any sort,
   no choleric hectoring and striding to and fro across the apartment,
   jerking out vehement commands for Bartleby to bundle himself off with his
   beggarly traps. Nothing of the kind. Without loudly bidding Bartleby
   depart--as an inferior genius might have done--I assumed the ground that
   depart he must; and upon the assumption built all I had to say. The more I
   thought over my procedure, the more I was charmed with it. Nevertheless,
   next morning, upon awakening, I had my doubts,--I had somehow slept off
   the fumes of vanity. One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is
   just after he awakes in the morning. My procedure seemed as sagacious as
   ever,--but only in theory. How it would prove in practice--there was the
   rub. It was truly a beautiful thought to have assumed Bartleby's
   departure; but, after all, that assumption was simply my own, and none of
   Bartleby's. The great point was, not whether I had assumed that he would
   quit me, but whether he would prefer so to do. He was more a man of
   preferences than assumptions.

   After breakfast, I walked down town, arguing the probabilities pro and
   con. One moment I thought it would prove a miserable failure, and Bartleby
   would be found all alive at my office as usual; the next moment it seemed
   certain that I should see his chair empty. And so I kept veering about. At
   the corner of Broadway and Canal- street, I saw quite an excited group of
   people standing in earnest conversation.

   "I'll take odds he doesn't," said a voice as I passed.

   "Doesn't go?--done!" said I, "put up your money."

   I was instinctively putting my hand in my pocket to produce my own, when I
   remembered that this was an election day. The words I had overheard bore
   no reference to Bartleby, but to the success or non-success of some
   candidate for the mayoralty. In my intent frame of mind, I had, as it
   were, imagined that all Broadway shared in my excitement, and were
   debating the same question with me. I passed on, very thankful that the
   uproar of the street screened my momentary absent-mindedness.

   As I had intended, I was earlier than usual at my office door. I stood
   listening for a moment. All was still. He must be gone. I tried the knob.
   The door was locked. Yes, my procedure had worked to a charm; he indeed
   must be vanished. Yet a certain melancholy mixed with this: I was almost
   sorry for my brilliant success. I was fumbling under the door mat for the
   key, which Bartleby was to have left there for me, when accidentally my
   knee knocked against a panel, producing a summoning sound, and in response
   a voice came to me from within--"Not yet; I am occupied."

   It was Bartleby.

   I was thunderstruck. For an instant I stood like the man who, pipe in
   mouth, was killed one cloudless afternoon long ago in Virginia, by summer
   lightning; at his own warm open window he was killed, and remained leaning
   out there upon the dreamy afternoon, till some one touched him, when he
   fell. "Not gone!" I murmured at last. But again obeying that wondrous
   ascendancy which the inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from which
   ascendancy, for all my chafing, I could not completely escape, I slowly
   went down stairs and out into the street, and while walking round the
   block, considered what I should next do in this unheard-of-perplexity.
   Turn the man out by an actual thrusting I could not; to drive him away by
   calling him hard names would not do; calling in the police was an
   unpleasant idea; and yet, permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over
   me,--this too I could not think of. What was to be done? or, if nothing
   could be done, was there any thing further that I could assume in the
   matter? Yes, as before I had prospectively assumed that Bartleby would
   depart, so now I might retrospectively assume that departed he was. In the
   legitimate carrying out of this assumption, I might enter my office in a
   great hurry, and pretending not to see Bartleby at all, walk straight
   against him as if he were air. Such a proceeding would in a singular
   degree have the appearance of a home-thrust. It was hardly possible that
   Bartleby could withstand such an application of the doctrine of
   assumptions. But upon second thoughts the success of the plan seemed
   rather dubious. I resolved to argue the matter over with him again.

   Bartleby," said I, entering the office, with a quietly severe expression.
   "I am seriously displeased. I am pained, Bartleby. I had thought better of
   you. I had imagined you of such a gentlemanly organization, that in any
   delicate dilemma a slight hint would suffice--in short, an assumption. But
   it appears I am deceived. Why," I added, unaffectedly starting, "you have
   not even touched the money yet," pointing to it, just where I had left it
   the evening previous.

   He answered nothing.

   "Will you, or will you not, quit me?" I now demanded in a sudden passion,
   advancing close to him.

   "I would prefer not to quit you," he replied, gently emphasizing the not.

   "What earthly right have you to stay here? do you pay any rent? Do you pay
   my taxes? Or is this property yours?"

   He answered nothing.

   "Are you ready to go on and write now? Are your eyes recovered? Could you
   copy a small paper for me this morning? or help examine a few lines? or
   step round to the post-office? In a word, will you do any thing at all, to
   give a coloring to your refusal to depart the premises?"

   He silently retired into his hermitage.

   I was now in such a state of nervous resentment that I thought it but
   prudentto check myself at present from further demonstrations. Bartleby
   and I were alone. I remembered the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and
   the still more unfortunate Colt in the solitary office of the latter; and
   how poor Colt, being dreadfully incensed by Adams, and imprudently
   permitting himself to get wildly excited, was at unawares hurried into his
   fatal act--an act which certainly no man could possibly deplore more than
   the actor himself. Often it had occurred to me in my ponderings upon the
   subject, that had that altercation taken place in the public street, or at
   a private residence, it would not have terminated as it did. It was the
   circumstance of being alone in a solitary office, up stairs, of a building
   entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic associations--an uncarpeted
   office, doubtless of a dusty, haggard sort of appearance;--this it must
   have been, which greatly helped to enhance the irritable desperation of
   the hapless Colt.

   But when this old Adam of resentment rose in me and tempted me concerning
   Bartleby, I grappled him and threw him. How? Why, simply by recalling the
   divine injunction: "A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one
   another." Yes, this it was that saved me. Aside from higher
   considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent
   principle--a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed murder
   for jealousy's sake, and anger's sake, and hatred's sake, and selfishness'
   sake, and spiritual pride's sake; but no man that ever I heard of, ever
   committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity's sake. Mere
   self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should,
   especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and
   philanthropy. At any rate, upon the occasion in question, I strove to
   drown my exasperated feelings towards the scrivener by benevolently
   construing his conduct. Poor fellow, poor fellow! thought I, he don't mean
   any thing; and besides, he has seen hard times, and ought to be indulged.

   I endeavored also immediately to occupy myself, and at the same time to
   comfort my despondency.I tried to fancy that in the course of the morning,
   at such time as might prove agreeable to him, Bartleby, of his own free
   accord, would emerge from his hermitage, and take up some decided line of
   march in the direction of the door. But no. Half-past twelve o'clock came;
   Turkey began to glow in the face, overturn his inkstand, and become
   generally obstreperous; Nippers abated down into quietude and courtesy;
   Ginger Nut munched his noon apple; and Bartleby remained standing at his
   window in one of his profoundest deadwall reveries. Will it be credited?
   Ought I to acknowledge it? That afternoon I left the office without saying
   one further word to him.

   Some days now passed, during which, at leisure intervals I looked a little
   into Edwards on the Will," and "Priestly on Necessity." Under the
   circumstances, those books induced a salutary feeling. Gradually I slid
   into the persuasion that these troubles of mine touching the scrivener,
   had been all predestinated from eternity, and Bartleby was billeted upon
   me for some mysterious purpose of an all-wise Providence, which it was not
   for a mere mortal like me to fathom. Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your
   screen, thought I; I shall persecute you no more; you are harmless and
   noiseless as any of these old chairs; in short, I never feel so private as
   when I know you are here. At least I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the
   predestinated purpose of my life. I am content. Others may have loftier
   parts to enact; but my mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you
   with office-room for such period as you may see fit to remain.

   I believe that this wise and blessed frame of mind would have continued
   with me, had it not been for the unsolicited and uncharitable remarks
   obtruded upon me by my professional friends who visited the rooms. But
   thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out
   at last the best resolves of the more generous. Though to be sure, when I
   reflected upon it, it was not strange that people entering my office
   should be struck by the peculiar aspect of the unaccountable Bartleby, and
   so be tempted to throw out some sinister observations concerning him.
   Sometimes an attorney having business with me, and calling at my office,
   and finding no one but the scrivener there, would undertake to obtain some
   sort of precise information from him touching my whereabouts; but without
   heeding his idle talk, Bartleby would remain standing immovable in the
   middle of the room. So after contemplating him in that position for a
   time, the attorney would depart, no wiser than he came.

   Also, when a Reference was going on, and the room full of lawyers and
   witnesses and business was driving fast; some deeply occupied legal
   gentleman present, seeing Bartleby wholly unemployed, would request him to
   run round to his (the legal gentleman's) office and fetch some papers for
   him. Thereupon, Bartleby would tranquilly decline, and remain idle as
   before. Then the lawyer would give a great stare, and turn to me. And what
   could I say? At last I was made aware that all through the circle of my
   professional acquaintance, a whisper of wonder was running round, having
   reference to the strange creature I kept at my office. This worried me
   very much. And as the idea came upon me of his possibly turning out a
   long-lived man, and keep occupying my chambers, and denying my authority;
   and perplexing my visitors; and scandalizing my professional reputation;
   and casting a general gloom over the premises; keeping soul and body
   together to the last upon his savings (for doubtless he spent but half a
   dime a day), and in the end perhaps outlive me, and claim possession of my
   office by right of his perpetual occupancy: as all these dark
   anticipations crowded upon me more and more, and my friends continually
   intruded their relentless remarks upon the apparition in my room; a great
   change was wrought in me. I resolved to gather all my faculties together,
   and for ever rid me of this intolerable incubus.

   Ere revolving any complicated project, however, adapted to this end, I
   first simply suggested to Bartleby the propriety of his permanent
   departure. In a calm and serious tone, I commended the idea to his careful
   and mature consideration. But having taken three days to meditate upon it,
   he apprised me that his original determination remained the same; in
   short, that he still preferred to abide with me.

   What shall I do? I now said to myself, buttoning up my coat to the last
   button. What shall I do? what ought I to do? what does conscience say I
   should do with this man, or rather ghost. Rid myself of him, I must; go,
   he shall. But how? You will not thrust him, the poor, pale, passive
   mortal,--you will not thrust such a helpless creature out of your door?
   you will not dishonor yourself by such cruelty? No, I will not, I cannot
   do that. Rather would I let him live and die here, and then mason up his
   remains in the wall. What then will you do? For all your coaxing, he will
   not budge. Bribes he leaves under your own paperweight on your table; in
   short, it is quite plain that he prefers to cling to you.

   Then something severe, something unusual must be done. What! surely you
   will not have him collared by a constable, and commit his innocent pallor
   to the common jail? And upon what ground could you procure such a thing to
   be done?--a vagrant, is he? What! he a vagrant, a wanderer, who refuses to
   budge? It is because he will not be a vagrant, then, that you seek to
   count him as a vagrant. That is too absurd. No visible means of support:
   there I have him. Wrong again: for indubitably he does support himself,
   and that is the only unanswerable proof that any man can show of his
   possessing the means so to do. No more then. Since he will not quit me, I
   must quit him. I will change my offices; I will move elsewhere; and give
   him fair notice, that if I find him on my new premises I will then proceed
   against him as a common trespasser.

   Acting accordingly, next day I thus addressed him: "I find these chambers
   too far from the City Hall; the air is unwholesome. In a word, I propose
   to remove my offices next week, and shall no longer require your services.
   I tell you this now, in order that you may seek another place."

   He made no reply, and nothing more was said.

   On the appointed day I engaged carts and men, proceeded to my chambers,
   and having but little furniture, every thing was removed in a few hours.
   Throughout, the scrivener remained standing behind the screen, which I
   directed to be removed the last thing. It was withdrawn; and being folded
   up like a huge folio, left him the motionless occupant of a naked room. I
   stood in the entry watching him a moment, while something from within me
   upbraided me.

   I re-entered, with my hand in my pocket--and--and my heart in my mouth.

   "Good-bye, Bartleby; I am going--good-bye, and God some way bless you; and
   take that," slipping something in his hand. But it dropped to the floor,
   and then,--strange to say--I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to
   be rid of.

   Established in my new quarters, for a day or two I kept the door locked,
   and started at every footfall in the passages. When I returned to my rooms
   after any little absence, I would pause at the threshold for an instant,
   and attentively listen, ere applying my key. But these fears were
   needless. Bartleby never came nigh me.

   I thought all was going well, when a perturbed looking stranger visited
   me, inquiring whether I was the person who had recently occupied rooms at
   No.--Wall-street.

   Full of forebodings, I replied that I was.

   "Then, sir," said the stranger, who proved a lawyer, "you are responsible
   for the man you left there. He refuses to do any copying; he refuses to do
   any thing; he says he prefers not to; and he refuses to quit the
   premises."

   "I am very sorry, sir," said I, with assumed tranquillity, but an inward
   tremor, "but, really, the man you allude to is nothing to me --he is no
   relation or apprentice of mine, that you should hold me responsible for
   him."

   "In mercy's name, who is he?"

   "I certainly cannot inform you. I know nothing about him. Formerly I
   employed him as a copyist; but he has done nothing for me now for some
   time past."

   "I shall settle him then,--good morning, sir."

   Several days passed, and I heard nothing more; and though I often felt a
   charitable prompting to call at the place and see poor Bartleby, yet a
   certain squeamishness of I know not what withheld me.

   All is over with him, by this time, thought I at last, when through
   another week no further intelligence reached me. But coming to my room the
   day after, I found several persons waiting at my door in a high state of
   nervous excitement.

   "That's the man--here he comes," cried the foremost one, whom recognized
   as the lawyer who had previously called upon me alone.

   "You must take him away, sir, at once," cried a portly person among them,
   advancing upon me, and whom I knew to be the landlord of No.--Wall-street.
   "These gentlemen, my tenants, cannot stand it any longer; Mr. B--"
   pointing to the lawyer, "has turned him out of his room, and he now
   persists in haunting the buildinggenerally, sitting upon the banisters of
   the stairs by day, and sleeping in the entry by night. Every body is
   concerned; clients are leaving the offices; some fears are entertained of
   a mob; something you must do, and that without delay."

   Aghast at this torment, I fell back before it, and would fain have locked
   myselfin my new quarters. In vain I persisted that Bartleby was nothing to
   me--no more than to any one else. In vain:--I was the last person known to
   have any thing to do with him, and they held me to the terrible account.
   Fearful then of being exposed in the papers (as one person present
   obscurely threatened) I considered the matter, and at length said, that if
   the lawyer would give me a confidential interview with the scrivener, in
   his (the lawyer's) own room, I would that afternoon strive my best to rid
   them of the nuisance they complained of.

   Going up stairs to my old haunt, there was Bartleby silently sitting upon
   the banister at the landing.

   "What are you doing here, Bartleby?" said I.

   "Sitting upon the banister," he mildly replied.

   I motioned him into the lawyer's room, who then left us.

   "Bartleby," said I, "are you aware that you are the cause of great
   tribulation to me, by persisting in occupying the entry after being
   dismissed from the office?"

   No answer.

   "Now one of two things must take place. Either you must do something or
   something must be done to you. Now what sort of business would you like to
   engage in? Would you like to re-engage in copying for some one?"

   "No; I would prefer not to make any change."

   "Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods store?"

   "There is too much confinement about that. No, I would not like a
   clerkship; but I am not particular."

   "Too much confinement," I cried, "why you keep yourself confined all the
   time!"

   "I would prefer not to take a clerkship," he rejoined, as if to settle
   that little item at once.

   "How would a bar-tender's business suit you? There is no trying of the
   eyesight in that."

   "I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I am not
   particular."

   His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I returned to the charge.

   "Well then, would you like to travel through the country collecting bills
   for the merchants? That would improve your health."

   "No, I would prefer to be doing something else."

   "How then would going as a companion to Europe, to entertain some young
   gentleman with your conversation,--how would that suit you?"

   "Not at all. It does not strike me that there is any thing definite about
   that. I like to be stationary. But I am not particular.

   "Stationary you shall be then," I cried, now losing all patience, and for
   the first time in all my exasperating connection with him fairly flying
   into a passion. "If you do not go away from these premises before night, I
   shall feel bound--indeed I am bound--to-- to--to quit the premises
   myself!" I rather absurdly concluded, knowing not with what possible
   threat to try to frighten his immobility into compliance. Despairing of
   all further efforts, I was precipitately leaving him, when a final thought
   occurred to me--one which had not been wholly unindulged before.

   "Bartleby," said I, in the kindest tone I could assume under such exciting
   circumstances, "will you go home with me now--not to my office, but my
   dwelling--and remain there till we can conclude upon some convenient
   arrangement for you at our leisure? Come, let us start now, right away."

   "No: at present I would prefer not to make any change at all."

   I answered nothing; but effectualy dodging every one by the suddenness and
   rapidity of my flight, rushed from the building, ran up Wall-street
   towards Broadway, and jumping into the first omnibus was soon removed from
   pursuit. As soon as tranquility returned I distinctly perceived that I had
   now done all that I possibly could, both in respect to the demands of the
   landlord and his tenants, and with regard to my own desire and sense of
   duty, to benefit Bartleby, and shield him from rude persecution. I now
   strove to be entirely care-free and quiescent; and my conscience justified
   me in the attempt; though indeed it was not so successful as I could have
   wished. So fearful was I of being again hunted out by the incensed
   landlord and his exasperated tenants, that, surrendering my business to
   Nippers, for a few days I drove about the upper part of the town and
   through the suburbs, in my rockaway; crossed over to Jersey City and
   Hoboken, and paid fugitive visits to Manhattanville and Astoria. In fact I
   almost lived in my rockaway for the time.

   When again I entered my office, lo, a note from the landlord lay upon
   desk. opened it with trembling hands. informed me that writer had sent to
   police, and Bartleby removed the Tombs as a vagrant. Moreover, since I
   knew more about him than any one else, he wished me to appear at that
   place, and make a suitable statement of the facts. These tidings had a
   conflicting effect upon me. At first I was indignant; but at last almost
   approved. The landlord's energetic, summary disposition, had led him to
   adopt a procedure which I do not think I would have decided upon myself;
   and yet as a last resort, under such peculiar circumstances, it seemed the
   only plan.

   As I afterwards learned, the poor scrivener, when told that he must be
   conducted to the Tombs, offered not the slightest obstacle, but in his
   pale unmoving way, silently acquiesced.

   Some of the compassionate and curious bystanders joined the party; and
   headed by one of the constables arm in arm with Bartleby, the silent
   procession filed its way through all the noise, and heat, and joy of the
   roaring thoroughfares at noon.

   The same day I received the note I went to the Tombs, or to speak more
   properly, the Halls of Justice. Seeking the right officer, I stated the
   purpose of my call, and was informed that the individual I described was
   indeed within. I then assured the functionary that Bartleby was a
   perfectly honest man, and greatly to be compassionated, however
   unaccountably eccentric. I narrated all I knew,and closed by suggesting
   the idea of letting him remain in as indulgent confinement as possible
   till something less harsh might be done--though indeed I hardly knew what.
   At all events, if nothing else could be decided upon, the alms-house must
   receive him. I then begged to have an interview.

   Being under no disgraceful charge, and quite serene and harmless in all
   his ways, they had permitted him freely to wander about the prison, and
   especially in the inclosed grass-platted yards thereof. And so I found him
   there, standing all alone in the quietest of the yards, his face towards a
   high wall, while all around, from the narrow slits of the jail windows, I
   thought I saw peering out upon him the eyes of murderers and thieves.

   "Bartleby!"

   "I know you," he said, without looking round,--"and I want nothing to say
   to you."

   "It was not I that brought you here, Bartleby," said I, keenly pained at
   his implied suspicion. "And to you, this should not be so vile a place.
   Nothing reproachful attaches to you by being here. And see, it is not so
   sad a place as one might think. Look, there is the sky, and here is the
   grass."

   "I know where I am," he replied, but would say nothing more, and so I left
   him.

   As I entered the corridor again, a broad meat-like man in an apron,
   accosted me, and jerking his thumb over his shoulder said--"Is that your
   friend?"

   "Yes."

   "Does he want to starve? If he does, let him live on the prison fare,
   that's all.

   "Who are you?" asked I, not knowing what to make of such an unofficially
   speaking person in such a place.

   "I am the grub-man. Such gentlemen as have friends here, hire me to
   provide them with something good to eat."

   "Is this so?" said I, turning to the turnkey.

   He said it was.

   "Well then," said I, slipping some silver into the grub-man's hands (for
   so they called him). "I want you to give particular attention to my friend
   there; let him have the best dinner you can get. And you must be as polite
   to him as possible."

   "Introduce me, will you?" said the grub-man, looking at me with an
   expression which seemed to say he was all impatience for an opportunity to
   give a specimen of his breeding.

   Thinking it would prove of benefit to the scrivener, I acquiesced; and
   asking the grub-man his name, went up with him to Bartleby.

   "Bartleby, this is a friend; you will find him very useful to you."

   "Your sarvant, sir, your sarvant," said the grub-man, making a low
   salutation behind his apron. "Hope you find it pleasant here,
   sir;--spacious grounds--cool apartments, sir--hope you'll stay with us
   some time--try to make it agreeable. What will you have for dinner today?"

   "I prefer not to dine to-day," said Bartleby, turning away. "It would
   disagree with me; I am unused to dinners." So saying he slowly moved to
   the other side of the inclosure, and took up a position fronting the
   dead-wall.

   "How's this?" said the grub-man, addressing me with a stare of
   astonishment. "He's odd, aint he?"

   "I think he is a little deranged," said I, sadly.

   "Deranged? deranged is it? Well now, upon my word, I thought that friend
   of yourn was a gentleman forger; they are always pale and genteel-like,
   them forgers. I can't help pity 'em--can't help it, sir. Did you know
   Monroe Edwards?" he added touchingly, and paused. Then, laying his hand
   pityingly on my shoulder, sighed, "he died of consumption at Sing-Sing. so
   you weren't acquainted with Monroe?"

   "No, I was never socially acquainted with any forgers. But I cannot stop
   longer. Look to my friend yonder. You will not lose by it. I will see you
   again."

   Some few days after this, I again obtained admission to the Tombs, and
   went through the corridors in quest of Bartleby; but without finding him.

   "I saw him coming from his cell not long ago," said a turnkey, "may be
   he's gone to loiter in the yards."

   So I went in that direction.

   "Are you looking for the silent man?" said another turnkey passing me.
   "Yonder he lies--sleeping in the yard there. 'Tis not twenty minutes since
   I saw him lie down."

   The yard was entirely quiet. It was not accessible to the common
   prisoners. The surrounding walls, of amazing thickness, kept off all sound
   behind them. The Egyptian character of the masonry weighed upon me with
   its gloom. But a soft imprisoned turf grew under foot. The heart of the
   eternal pyramids, it seemed, wherein, by some strange magic, through the
   clefts, grass-seed, dropped by birds, had sprung.

   Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying
   on his side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted Bartleby.
   But nothing stirred. I paused; then went close up to him; stooped over,
   and saw that his dim eyes were open; otherwise he seemed profoundly
   sleeping. Something prompted me to touch him. I felt his hand, when a
   tingling shiver ran up my arm and down my spine to my feet.

   The round face of the grub-man peered upon me now. "His dinner is ready.
   Won't he dine to-day, either? Or does he live without dining?"

   "Lives without dining," said I, and closed the eyes.

   "Eh!--He's asleep, aint he?"

   "With kings and counsellors," murmured I.

   * * * * * * * *

   There would seem little need for proceeding further in this history.
   Imagination will readily supply the meagre recital of poor Bartleby's
   interment. But ere parting with the reader, let me say, that if this
   little narrative has sufficiently interested him, to awaken curiosity as
   to who Bartleby was, and what manner of life he led prior to the present
   narrator's making his acquaintance, I can only reply, that in such
   curiosity I fully share, but am wholly unable to gratify it. Yet here I
   hardly know whether I should divulge one little item of rumor, which came
   to my ear a few months after the scrivener's decease. Upon what basis it
   rested, I could never ascertain; and hence how true it is I cannot now
   tell. But inasmuch as this vague report has not been without a certain
   strange suggestive interest to me, however said, it may prove the same
   with some others; and so I will briefly mention it. The report was this:
   that Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office at
   Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed by a change in the
   administration. When I think over this rumor, I cannot adequately express
   the emotions which seize me. Dead letters! does it not sound like dead
   men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid
   hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that
   of continually handling these dead letters and assorting them for the
   flames? For by the cart-load they are annually burned. Sometimes from out
   the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring:--the bank-note sent in
   swiftest charity:--he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any
   more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died
   unhoping; good tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved
   calamities. On errands of life, these letters speed to death.

   Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!
