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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11231 ***
+Bartleby, The Scrivener
+
+A STORY OF WALL-STREET.
+
+by Herman Melville
+
+
+
+
+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 of 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 employés, 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 tranquility of a snug retreat, do a snug business among
+rich men’s bonds and mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me,
+consider me an eminently _safe_ man. 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 late 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 in 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 that
+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 man like 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 willing to 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 unseemly 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 teatime. 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
+indispensable, 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 to be severely
+urged against gray hairs. Old age—even if it blot 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
+professional 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 any thing, 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
+business at 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 dressed
+in 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 of 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 peculiar
+cause—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 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 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
+famishing for 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 he 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 slow scrape of his chair legs on the uncarpeted 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 conclusions; 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, Nippers’ 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 (Nippers’) 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 ways 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. The 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 minute 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 wight?—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, and 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 pointblank.
+
+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 it 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 around 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 he 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 the 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. Yes, thought I, it is evident
+enough that Bartleby has been making his home here, keeping bachelor’s
+hall all 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 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 resolved upon this;—I would put certain calm
+questions to him the next morning, touching his history, etc., and if
+he declined to answer them openly and unreservedly (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 his 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 _any thing_ 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 calm
+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
+offices, 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 to-morrow 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
+mildly 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 involuntarily 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 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 sixpences 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 that 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 a
+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 have
+suffice—in short, an assumption. But it appears I am deceived. Why,” I
+added, unaffectedly starting, “you have not even touched that 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
+prudent to 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 dead-wall
+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 last 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 yet
+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 upon 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 tranquility, 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 I
+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 building generally, 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 torrent, I fell back before it, and would fain have
+locked myself in 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 effectually 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
+the desk. I opened it with trembling hands. It informed me that the
+writer had sent to the police, and had Bartleby removed to 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 yard 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 Mr. Cutlets; 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. May Mrs. Cutlets and I have the
+pleasure of your company to dinner, sir, in Mrs. Cutlets’ private
+room?”
+
+“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 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
+sounds 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 his eyes.
+
+“Eh!—He’s asleep, aint he?”
+
+“With kings and counselors,” murmured I.
+
+
+There would seem little need for proceeding further in this history.
+Imagination will readily supply the meager 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 certain strange suggestive interest to me, however sad, 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
+finger it was meant for, perhaps, moulders in the grave; a 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!
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11231 ***