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Bartleby The Scrivener · Bartleby The Scrivener

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  Bartleby, the Scrivener. A Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville. I
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  am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty
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  years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting
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  and somewhat singular set of men of whom, as yet nothing that I know
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  of has ever been written. I mean the law copyists or scriveners. I
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  have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I pleased,
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  could relate divers histories at which good natured gentlemen might smile and sentimental souls
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  might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few
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  passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener of the strangest I
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  ever saw or heard of. While of other law copyists I might write the
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  complete life of Bartleby, nothing of that sort can be done. I believe
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  that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. It
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  is an irreparable law to literature. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom
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  nothing is ascertainable except from the original sources, and in his case, those
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  are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby. That is
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  all I know of him, except indeed one vague report, which will appear
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  in the sequel ere introducing the Scribner as he first appeared to me. It
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  is fit I make some mention of myself, my employees, my business,
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  my chambers, and general surroundings, because some such description is indispensable to an
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  adequate understanding of the chief character about to be presented in primise. I am
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  a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound
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  conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I
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  belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence at times,
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  yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I
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  am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury or in any way
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  draws down public applause, but in the cool tranquility of a snug retreat,
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  do a snug business among rich men's bonds and mortgages and title deeds. All
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  who know me consider me an eminently safe man. The late John jacob Astor,
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  a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my
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  first grand point to be prudence. My next method, I do not speak
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  it in vanity, but simply record the fact that I was not unemployed in
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  my profession by the late John jacob Astor, a name which I admit I
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  love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it,
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  and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add that I was not insensible
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  to the late John jacob Astor's good opinion. Some time prior to the period
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  at which this little history begins, my avocations had been largely increased. The
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  good old office, now extinct in the state of New York of a Master
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  in Chancery had been conferred upon me. It was not a very arduous office,
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  but very pleasantly remunerative. I seldom lose my temper, much more seldom
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  indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages. But I must be permitted to
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  be rash here and declare that I consider the sudden and violent abrogation of the
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  office of Master in Chancery by the New Constitution as a premature act, inasmuch
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  as I had counted upon a life lease of the prophets, whereas I only
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  received those of a few short years. But this is by the way.
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  My chambers were upstairs at number blank Wall Street. At one end they looked
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  upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious skylight shaft, penetrating the
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  building from top to bottom. This view might have been considered rather tame than
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  otherwise deficient in what landscape painters call life. But if so, the view
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  from the other end of my chambers offered at least a contrast, if nothing
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  more. In that direction, my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty
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  brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade. Which wall required no spyglass
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  to bring out its lurking beauties, but for the benefit of all near sighted
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  spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes. Owing
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  to the great height of the surrounding buildings and my chambers being on the second
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  floor, the interval between this wall and mine, not a little resembled a
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  huge square cistern. At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I
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  had two persons as copyists in my employment, and a promising lad as an
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  office boy. First Turkey, second Nippers, third ginger Nut. These may
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  seem names, the like of which are not usually found in the directory.
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  In truth, they were nicknames mutually conferred upon each other by my three clerks,
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  and were deemed expressive of their respective persons or characters. He was a
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  short, percy Englishman of about my own age, that is, somewhere not
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  far from sixty. In the morning, one might say his face was of
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  a fine florid hue. But after twelve o'clock meridian his dinner hour, it
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  blazed like a grateful of Christmas coals, and continued blazing, but as it
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  were, with a gradual wane till six o'clock PM or thereabouts, after which
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  I saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which, gaining its
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  meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate,
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  and decline the following day with the like regularity and undiminished glory. There
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  are many singular coincidences I have known in the course of my life, not
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  the least among which was the fact that, exactly when Turkey displayed his fullest
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  beams from his red and radiant countenance, just then too. At that critical
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  moment began the daily period when I considered his business capacities as seriously disturbed for
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  the remainder of the twenty four hours. Not that he would was absolutely idle
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  or averse to business, then, far from it. The difficulty was he
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  was apt to be altogether too energetic. There was a strange, inflamed,
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  flurried, flighty recklessness of activity about him. He would be incautious in dipping
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  his pen into his inkstand. All his blots upon my documents were dropped there
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  after twelve o'clock Meridian. Indeed, not only would he be reckless and sadly
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  given to making blots in the afternoon, but some days he went further and
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  was rather noisy. At such times too, his face flamed with augmented blazonry,
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  as if cannel coal had been heaped on anthracite. He made an unpleasant
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  racket with his chair, spilled his sandbox. In mending his pens, impatiently
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  split them all to pieces and threw them on the floor. In a sudden
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  passion, stood up and leaned over his table, boxing his papers about in
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  a most indecorous manner. Very sad to behold in an elderly man like him.
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  Nevertheless, as he was in many ways a most valuable person to me,
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  and all the time before twelve o'clock, Meridian was the quickest, steadiest
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  creature, too, accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easy
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  to be matched. For these reasons, I was willing to overlook his eccentricities,
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  though indeed occasionally I remonstrated with him. I did this very gently,
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  however, because though the civilist, nay, the blandest and most reverential of
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  men in the morning, yet in the afternoon he was disposed upon provocation to
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  be slightly rash with his tongue, in fact insolent. Now valuing his morning
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  services as I did, and resolved not to lose them, yet at the
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  same time, made uncomfortable by his inflamed ways after twelve o'clock, and being
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  a man of peace, unwilling by my admonitions to call forth unseemly retorts from
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  him, I took upon me one Saturday noon he was always worse on Saturdays,
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  to hint to him very kindly that perhaps, now that he was growing
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  old, it might be well to abridge his labors. In short, he
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  need not come to my chambers after twelve o'clock. But dinner over had best
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  go home to his lodgings and rest himself till tea time. But no,
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  he insisted upon his afternoon devotions. His countenance became intolerably fervid, as he
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  oratorically assured me, gesticulating with a long ruler at the other end of the
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  room, that if his services in the morning were useful, how indispensable,
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  then in the afternoon, with submission, sir, said Turkey, on this
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  occasion, I consider myself your right hand man. In the morning, I
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  but marshal and deploy my columns. But in the afternoon I put myself at
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  their head and gallantly charged the foe. Thus and he made a violent thrust
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  with the ruler. But the blot's Turkey intimated eye true. But with submission,
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  sir, behold these hairs. I am getting old. Surely, Sir,
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  A blot or two of a warm afternoon is not to be severely urged
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  against gray hairs old age, even if it blot the page as honorable.
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  With submission, sir, we both are getting old. This appeal to my
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  fellow feeling was hardly to be resisted at all. Events I saw that go,
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  he would not, so I made up my mind to let him stay,
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  resolving nevertheless, to see to it that during the afternoon he had to
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  do with my less important papers. Nippers, the second on my list,
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  was a whiskered, sallow and upon the whole rather piradical looking young man of
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  about five and twenty. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers,
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  ambition and indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the
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  duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly professional affairs such as
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  the original drawing up of legal documents. The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional
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  nervous testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind together over missus
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  stakes committed in copying, unnecessary maledictions, hissed rather than spoken in the heat
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  of business, and especially by a continual discontent with the height of the table
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  where he worked. Though of a very ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers could never
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  get this table to suit him. He put chips under it, blocks of
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  various sorts, bits of pasteboard, and at last went so far as to
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  attempt an exquisite adjustment by final pieces of folded blotting paper. But no invention
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  would answer. If for the sake of easing his back, he brought the
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  table lid at a sharp angle, well up towards his chin and wrote there
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  like a man using the steep roof of a Dutch house for his desk,
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  then he declared that it stopped the circulation in his arms. If now he
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  lowered the table to his waistbands and stooped over it in writing, then there
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  was a sore aching in his back. In short, the truth of the
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  matter was Nippers knew not what he wanted, or if he wanted anything,
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  it was to be rid of a scrivener's table altogether. Among the manifestations of
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  his diseased ambition was a fondness he had for receiving visits from certain ambiguous looking
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  fellows in seedy coats, whom he called his clients. Indeed, I was
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  aware that not only was he at times considerable of a ward politician, but
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  he occasionally did a little business at the justice's courts, and was not unknown
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  on the steps of the tombs I have good reason to believe, however,
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  that one individual who called upon him at my chambers, and who with a
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  grand air he insisted was his client, was no other than a dun and
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  the alleged title deed a bill. But with all his failings and the annoyances
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  he caused me Nippers, like his compatriot Turkey, was a very useful man
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  to me, wrote a neat, swift hand, and when he chose was
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  not deficient in a gentlemanly sort of deportment. Added to this, he always
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  dressed in a gentlemanly sort of way, and so incidentally reflected credit upon my
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  chambers. Whereas with res to Turkey, I had much ado to keep him
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  from being a reproach to me. His clothes were apt to look oily and
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  smell of eating houses. He wore his pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer.
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  His coats were execrable, his hat not to be handled. But while
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  the hat was a thing of indifference to me, inasmuch as his natural civility
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  and deference as a dependent Englishman always led him to doff it the moment he
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  entered the room, Yet his coat was another matter concerning his coats, I
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  reasoned with him, but with no effect. The truth was, I suppose
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  that a man of so small an income could not afford to sport such a
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  lustrous face and a lustrous coat at one and the same time, as Nippers
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  once observed, Turkey's money went chiefly for red ink. One winter day,
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  I presented Turkey with a highly respectable looking coat of my own, a padded
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  gray coat of a most comfortable warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the
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  knee to the neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate the favor and abate his
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  rashness and obstreppery busness of afternoons. But no, I verily believed that buttoning
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  himself up in so downy and blanket like a coat had a pernicious effect upon
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  him, upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for horses.
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  In fact, precisely as a rash rest of horses said to feel his oats,
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  so Turkey felt his coat. It made him insolent. He was a
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  man whom prosperity harmed. Though concerning the self indulgent habits of Turkey, I
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  had my own private surmises. Yet touching Nippers, I was well persuaded that
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  whatever might be his faults in other respects, he was at least a temperate
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  young man. But indeed nature herself seemed to have been his vintner, and
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  at his birth charged him so thoroughly with an irritable brandylike disposition that all subsequent
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  quotations were needless. When I consider how amid the stillness of my chambers,
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  Nippers would sometimes impatiently rise from his seat, and, stooping over his table,
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  spread his arms wide apart, seized the whole desk, and move it
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  and jerk it with a grim grinding motion on the floor, as if the
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  table were a perverse, voluntary agent intent on thwarting and vexing him. I
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  plainly perceived that for Nippers, brandy and water were altogether superfluous. It was
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  fortunate for me that, owing to its peculiar cause indigestion, the irritability and
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  consequent nervousness of Nippers were mainly observable in the morning, while in the afternoon
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  he was comparatively mild, so that Turkey's paroxysms only coming on about twelve o'clock.
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  I never had to do with their eccentricities at one time, their fits
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  relieved each other like guards. When Nippers was on, Turkey's was off,
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  and vice versa. This was a good natural arrangement under the circumstances. Ginger
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  Nut, the third on my list, was a lad some twelve years old.
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  His father was a car man, ambitious of seeing his son on the
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  bench instead of a cart before he died, so he sent him to my
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  office as student at law errand boy, and and cleaner and sweeper, at
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  the rate of one dollar a week. He had a little desk to himself,
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  but he did not use it much. Upon inspection, the drawer exhibited
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  a great array of the shells of various sorts of nuts. Indeed, to
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  this quick witted youth, the whole noble science of the law was contained in
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  a nutshell. Not the least among the employments of ginger Nut, as well
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  as one which he discharged with the most alacrity, was his duty as cake
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  and apple purveyor for Turkey and Nippers, copying law papers. Being proverbially dry
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  husky sort of business, my two scriveners were fain to moisten their mouths,
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  very often, with spitzenbergs to be had at the numerous stalls nigh the custom
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  house and post office. Also they sent ginger nut very frequently for that peculiar
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  cake, small flat, round and very spicy, after which he had been
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  named by them. Of a cold morning when business was but dull, Turkey
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  would gobble up scores of these cakes as if they were mere wafers. Indeed,
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  they sell them at the rate of six or eight for a penny.
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  The scrape of his pen blending with the crunching of the crisp particles in his
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  mouth. Of all the fiery afternoon blunders and flurried rashnesses of Turkey was his
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  once moistening a ginger cake between his lips and clapping it on to a mortgage
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  for a seal. I came within an ace of dismissing him then, but
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  he mollified me by making an oriental bow and saying, with submission, sir,
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  it was generous of me to find you in stationary on my own account.
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  Now, my original business, that of a conveyancer and title hunter and
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  drawer up of recondite documents of all sorts, was considerably increased by receiving the
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  Master's office. There was now great work for Scrivener's not only must I push
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  the clerks already with me, but I must have additional help. In answer
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  to my advertisement, a motionless young man one morning stood upon my office threshold,
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  the door being opened, for it was summer. I can see that
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  figure now, pallidly, neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn. It was
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  Bartleby. After a few words touching his qualifications, I engaged him, glad
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  to have among my cores of copyists a man of so singularly sedate, an
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  aspect which I thought might operate beneficially upon the flighty temper of Turkey and the
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  fiery one of nippers. I should have stated before that ground glass folding doors
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  divided my premises into two parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners,
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  the other by myself. According to my humor, I threw open these
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  doors or closed them. I resolved to assign Bartleby a corner by the folding
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  doors, but on my side of them, so as to have this quiet
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  man within easy call in case any trifling thing was to be done. I
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  placed his desk close up to a small side window in that part of the
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  room, a window which originally had afforded a lateral view of certain grimy back
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  yards and bricks, but which, owing to subsequent erections, commanded at present
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  no of you at all. Though it gave some light. Within three feet
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  of the panes was a wall, and the light came down from far above
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  between two lofty buildings, as from a very small opening in a dome.
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  Still further to a satisfactory arrangement, I procured a high green folding screen which
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  might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from my voice,
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  and thus in a manner privacy and society were conjoined. At first Bartleby
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  did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famishing for something to copy,
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  he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for
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  digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sunlight and by
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  candlelight. I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been
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  cheerfully industrious, But he wrote on silently, palely Mechanically. It is,
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  of course an indispensable part of a scrivener's business to verify the accuracy of his
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  copy word by word, where there where are two or more scriveners in an
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  office. They assist each other in this examination, one reading from the copy,
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  the other holding the original. It is a very dull, wearisome,
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  and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some sanguine temperaments it would
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  be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the meddlesome poet Byron
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  would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of say five
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  hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand. Now and then, in
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  the haste of business. It had been my habit to assist in comparing some
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  brief document, myself calling Turkey or Nippers for this purpose. One object I
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  had in placing Bartleby so handy to me behind the screen, was to avail
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  myself of his services on such trivial occasions. It was on the third day
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  I think of his being with me, and before any necessity had arisen for
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  having his own writing examined, that, being much hurried to complete a small
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  affair I had in hand, I abruptly called to Bartleby. In my haste
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  and natural expectancy of instant compliance, I sat with my head bent over the
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  original on my desk, and my right hand sideways and somewhat nervously extended with
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  the copy, so that immediately upon emerging from his retreat, Bartleby might snatch
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  it and proceed to business without the least delay. In this very attitude did
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  I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted
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  him to do, namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine
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  my surprise, nay, my consternation, when, without moving from his privacy,
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  Bartleby, in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, I would
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  prefer not to. I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties.
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  Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby
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  had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I
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  could assume, but in quite as clear a one came the previous reply,
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  I would prefer not to prefer not to, echoed I, rising in high
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  excitement and crossing the room with a stride. What do you mean? Are
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  you moon struck? I want you to help me compare this sheet. Here,
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  take it, and I thrust it towards him, I would prefer not
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  to, said he. I looked at him steadfastly. His face was leanly
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  composed, his gray eye dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him.
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  Had there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience, or impertinence in
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  his manner, in other words, had there been anything ordinarily human about him,
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  doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But as it
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  was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster of Paris
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  bust of Cicero out of doors. I stood gazing at him awhile as he
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  went on with his own writing, and then reseated myself at my desk.
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  This is very strange, thought I. What had one best do? But
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  my business hurried me. I concluded to forget the matter for the present,
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  reserving it for my future leisure. So, calling Nippers from the other room,
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  the paper was speedily examined end of section one, section two. A
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  few days after this, Bartleby concluded four lengthy documents, being quadruplicates of a
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  week's testimony taken before me in my High Court of Chancery. It became necessary
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  to examine them. It was an important suit, and great accuracy was imperative.
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  Having all things arranged, I called Turkey Nippers and ginger Nut from the
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  next room, meaning to place the four copies in the hands of my four
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  clerks while I should read from the original. Accordingly, Turkey Nippers and ginger
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  Nut had taken their seats in a row, each with his document in hand.
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  When I called to Bartleby to join this interesting group. Bartleby, quick,
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  I'm waiting. I heard a slow scrape of his chair legs on the
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  uncarpeted floor, and soon he appeared, standing at the entrance of his hermitage.
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  What is wanted, he said, mildly. The copies. The copies,
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  said I hurriedly. We're going to examine them there, and I held
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  towards him the fourth quadruplicate. I would prefer not to, he said,
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  and gently disappeared behind the screen. For a few moments, I was turned
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  into a pillar of salt, standing at the head of my seated column of
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  clerks. Recovering myself, I advanced towards the screen and demanded the reason for
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  such extraordinary conduct? Why do you refuse? I would prefer not to With
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  any other man, I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion, scorned
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  all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence. But there was
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  something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner,
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  touched and disconcerted me. I began to reason with him, these are
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  your own copies we are about to examine. It is labor saving to you,
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  because one examination will answer for your four papers. It is common usage.
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  Every copyist is bound to help examine his copy, is it not?
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  So? Will you not speak? Answer? I prefer not to, he
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  replied, in a flute like tone. It seemed to me that while I
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  had been addressing him, he carefully revolved every statement that I made, fully
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  comprehended the meaning, could not gainsay the irresistible conclusions. But at the same
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  time, some paramount consideration prevailed with him to reply as he did. You
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  are decided, then, not to comply with my request, A request made
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  according to common usage and common sense. He briefly gave me to understand that
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  on that point my judgment was sound. Yes, his decision was irreversible.
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  It is not seldom the case that when a man is browbeaten in some unprecedented
• 24:49
  and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in his own plainest faith.
• 24:56
  He begins, as it were, vaguely, to surmise that, wonderful as
• 25:00
  it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the other
• 25:03
  side. Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he turns to them
• 25:07
  for some reinforcement for his own faltering mind. Turkey said, I what do
• 25:14
  you think of this? Am I not right with submission? Sir? Said
• 25:18
  Turkey, with his blandest tone, I think that you are. Nippers said
• 25:22
  I, what do you think of it? I think I should kick him
• 25:26
  out of the office. The reader of nice perceptions will here perceive that it
• 25:32
  being mourning. Turkey's answer is couched in polite and tranquil terms, but Nippers
• 25:37
  replies in ill tempered ones or to repeat a previous sentence. Nippers's ugly mood
• 25:42
  was on duty and Turkey's off. Ginger Nut said, I willing to enlist
• 25:48
  the smallest suffrage in my behalf. What do you think of it? I
• 25:52
  think, sir, he's a little looney, replied ginger Nut with a grin.
• 25:56
  You hear what they say, said I, turning towards the screen,
• 26:00
  come forth and do your duty. But he vouchsafed no reply. I pondered
• 26:06
  a moment in sore perplexity, but once more business hurried me, I determined
• 26:11
  again to postpone the consideration of this dilemma to my future leisure. With a
• 26:15
  little trouble, we made out to examine the papers without Bartleby, though at
• 26:19
  every page or two Turkey deferentially dropped his opinion that this proceeding was quite out
• 26:25
  of the common, while Nippers, twitching his chair with a dyspeptic nervousness,
• 26:30
  ground out between his set teeth occasional hissing maledictions against the stubborn oaf behind the
• 26:34
  screen. And for his Nipper's part, this was the first and the last
• 26:40
  time he would do another man's business without pay. Meanwhile, Bartleby sat in
• 26:45
  his hermitage, oblivious to everything but his own peculiar business. There some days
• 26:51
  passed the scrivener being employed upon another lengthy work. His late remarkable conduct led
• 26:56
  me to regard his ways narrowly. I observed that he he never went to
• 27:00
  dinner, indeed that he never went anywhere. As yet I had, never,
• 27:03
  of my personal knowledge, known him to be outside of my office.
• 27:08
  He was a perpetual sentry in the corner at about eleven o'clock, though in
• 27:12
  the morning I noticed that ginger nut would advance toward the opening in Bartleby's screen,
• 27:18
  as if silently beckoned thither by a gesture invisible to me where I sat.
• 27:22
  The boy would then leave the office, jingling a few pence, and
• 27:26
  reappear with a handful of ginger nuts, which he delivered in the hermitage,
• 27:30
  receiving two of the cakes for his trouble. He lives then on ginger nuts,
• 27:34
  thought I never eats a dinner properly speaking. He must be a vegetarian,
• 27:40
  then, but no, he never eats even vegetables. He eats nothing
• 27:42
  but ginger nuts. My mind then ran on in reveries concerning the probable effects
• 27:48
  upon the human constitution of living entirely on ginger nuts. Ginger nuts are so
• 27:55
  called because they contained ginger as one of their peculiar constituents and the final flavor
• 28:00
  one. Now, what was ginger a hot spicy thing? Was Bartleby hot
• 28:04
  and spicy? Not at all? Ginger then had no effect upon Bartleby,
• 28:10
  probably he preferred it should have none. Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as
• 28:15
  a passive resistance. If the individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper,
• 28:21
  and the resisting one perfectly harmless in his passivity, then in the better
• 28:25
  moods of the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination what
• 28:30
  proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the most
• 28:33
  part, I regarded Bartleby in his ways, poor fellow, thought I he
• 28:38
  means no mischief. It is plain he intends no insolence. His aspect sufficiently
• 28:44
  evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary. He is useful to me. I can
• 28:48
  get along with him. If I turn him away, the chances are he
• 28:52
  will fall in with some less indulgent employer, and then he will be rudely
• 28:56
  treated and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve. Yes, here I can cheaply
• 29:02
  purchase a delicious self approval. To befriend Bartleby, to humor him in his
• 29:07
  strange wilfulness, will cost me little or nothing while I lay up in my
• 29:11
  soul. What will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience. But this
• 29:15
  mood was not invariable with me. The passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me.
• 29:22
  I felt strangely goaded on to encounter him in new opposition, to elicit some
• 29:26
  angry spark from him answerable to my own. But indeed I might as well
• 29:30
  have essayed to strike fire with my knuckles against a bit of windsor soap.
• 29:34
  But one afternoon the evil impulse in me mastered me, and the following little
• 29:40
  scene ensued. Bartleby said, I, when those papers are all copied,
• 29:45
  I will compare them with you. I would prefer not to. How surely
• 29:51
  you do not mean to persist in that mulish vagary. No answer, I
• 29:56
  threw open the folding doors near by, and turning upon Turkey and Nippers exclaimed
• 30:00
  in an excited manner. He says, a second time, he won't examine
• 30:04
  his papers. What do you think of it, Turkey? It was afternoon,
• 30:08
  be it, remembered. Turkey sat glowing like a brass boiler, his
• 30:12
  bald head steaming, his hands reeling among his blotted papers. Think of it,
• 30:18
  roared Turkey. I think I'll just step behind his screen and black his
• 30:22
  eyes for him. So saying. Turkey rose to his feet and threw his
• 30:26
  arms into a pugilistic position. He was hurrying away to make good his promise
• 30:32
  when I detained him, alarmed at the effect of incautiously rousing Turkey's combativeness.
• 30:37
  After dinner sit down, Turkey said, I and hear what Nippers has to
• 30:41
  say. What do you think of it? Nippers? Would I not be
• 30:45
  justified in immediately dismissing Bartleby? Excuse me? That is for you to decide,
• 30:51
  Sir, I think his conduct quite unusual and indeed unjust, as regards
• 30:55
  Turkey and myself. But it may only be a passing whim Ah, exclaimed
• 31:00
  I. You have strangely changed your mind. Then you speak very gently of
• 31:04
  him. Now all beer, cried Turkey. Gentleness's effects of beer. Nippers
• 31:11
  and I dined together to day. You see how gentle I am? Sir?
• 31:15
  Shall I go and black his eyes? You refer to Bartleby? I
• 31:18
  suppose no, not to day, Turkey, I replied, pray, put
• 31:22
  up your fists. I closed the doors and again advanced towards Bartleby. I
• 31:27
  felt additional incentives tempting me to my fate. I burned to be rebelled against
• 31:33
  again. I remembered that Bartleby never left the office. Bartleby said, I,
• 31:38
  ginger nut is away. Just step round to the post office, won't
• 31:41
  you? It was but a three minute walk, and see if there is
• 31:45
  anything for me. I would prefer not to you, will not? I
• 31:51
  prefer not. I staggered to my desk and sat there in a deep study.
• 31:56
  My blind inveteracy returned. Was there any other thing in which I could
• 32:00
  procure myself to be ignominiously repulsed by this lean, penniless wight, my hired
• 32:06
  clerk? What added thing is there perfectly reasonable that he will be sure to
• 32:10
  refuse to do? Bartleby? No answer, Bartleby, in a louder tone.
• 32:17
  No answer, Bartleby, I roared like a very ghost, agreeably to
• 32:24
  the laws of magical invocation. At the third summons, he appeared at the
• 32:29
  entrance of his hermitage. Go to the next room and tell nippers to come
• 32:32
  to me. I prefer not to, he respectfully and slowly said, and
• 32:37
  mildly disappeared. Very good. Bartleby said I, in a quiet, sort
• 32:42
  of serenely severe, self possessed tone, intimating the unalterable purpose of some terrible
• 32:47
  retribution very close at hand. At the moment I half intended something of the
• 32:52
  kind, But upon the whole, as it was drawing towards my dinner hour,
• 32:57
  I thought it best to put on my hat and walk home for the
• 33:00
  day, suffering much from perplexity and distress of mind, Shall I acknowledge it?
• 33:07
  The conclusion of this whole business was that it soon became a fixed fact
• 33:10
  of my chambers that a pale young scrivener by the name of Bartleby, and
• 33:15
  a desk there, that he copied for me at the usual rate of four
• 33:19
  cents a folio one hundred words, but he was permanently exempt from examining the
• 33:23
  work done by him, that duty being transferred to Turkey and Nippers, one
• 33:29
  of compliment, doubtless to their superior acuteness. Moreover, said Bartleby was never,
• 33:34
  on any account to be dispatched on the most trivial errand of any sort,
• 33:37
  and that even if entreated to take upon him such a matter, it
• 33:42
  was generally understood that he would prefer not to, In other words, that
• 33:45
  he would refuse point blank. As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled
• 33:52
  to Bartleby, his steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry,
• 33:58
  except when he chose to throw himself elf into a standing reverie behind his
• 34:01
  screen. His great stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under all circumstances, made
• 34:07
  him a valuable acquisition. One prime thing was this, he was always there,
• 34:14
  first in the morning, continually through the day, and the last at
• 34:16
  night. I had a singular confidence in his honesty. I felt my most
• 34:22
  precious papers perfectly safe in his hands. Sometimes, to be sure, I
• 34:27
  could not, for the very soul of me, avoid falling into sudden spasmodic
• 34:30
  passions with him, for it was exceeding difficult to bear in mind all the
• 34:36
  time those strange peculiarities, privileges, and unheard of exemptions forming the tacit stipulations
• 34:43
  on Bartleby's part, under which he remained in my office. Now and then,
• 34:47
  in the eagerness of dispatching pressing business, I would inadvertently summon Bartleby in
• 34:52
  a short, rapid tone, to put his finger, say on the incipient
• 34:57
  tie of a bit of red tape with which I was about pressing some papers.
• 35:01
  Of course, from behind the screen, the usual answer I prefer not
• 35:05
  to was sure to come. And then how could a human creature, with
• 35:09
  the common infirmities of our nature refrain from bitterly exclaiming upon such perverseness, such
• 35:15
  unreasonableness. However, every added repulse of this sort which I received only tended
• 35:22
  to lessen the probability of my repeating the inadvertence. Here it must be said
• 35:28
  that, according to the custom of most legal gentlemen occupying chambers in densely populated
• 35:32
  law buildings, there were several keys to my door. One was kept by
• 35:37
  a woman residing in the attic, which person weakly scrubbed and daily swept and
• 35:42
  dusted my apartments. Another was kept by turkey for convenience sake. The third
• 35:47
  I sometimes carried in my own pocket. The fourth I knew not who had
• 35:52
  Now. One Sunday morning, I happened to go to Trinity Church to hear
• 35:57
  a celebrated preacher, and finding myself rather early on the ground, I thought
• 36:01
  I would walk around to my chambers for a while. Luckily I had my
• 36:06
  key with me, But upon applying it to the lock, I found it
• 36:08
  resisted by something inserted from the inside. Quite surprised, I called out,
• 36:14
  when, to my consternation, a key was turned from within, and thrusting
• 36:17
  his lean visage at me and holding the door ajar. The apparition of Bartleby
• 36:22
  appeared in his shirt sleeves and otherwise in a strangely tattered dishabilee, saying quietly
• 36:29
  that he was sorry, but he was deeply engaged just then and preferred not
• 36:34
  admitting me at present. In a brief word or two, he moreover added
• 36:37
  that perhaps I had better walk round the block two or three times, and
• 36:42
  by that time he would probably have concluded his affairs. Now, the utterly
• 36:46
  unsurmised appearance of Bartleby tenanting my law chambers of a Sunday morning, with his
• 36:52
  cadaverously gentlemanly nonchalance, yet withal firm and self possessed, had such a strange
• 36:59
  effect on me that incontinently I slunk away from my own door and did as
• 37:04
  desired, but not without sundry twinges of impotent rebellion against the mild effrontery of
• 37:09
  this unaccountable scrivener. Indeed, it was his wonderful mildness, chiefly which not
• 37:15
  only disarmed me, but unmanned me, as it were, for I consider
• 37:19
  that one, for the time is a sort of unmanned when he tranquility permits
• 37:22
  his hired clerk to dictate to him and order him away from his own premises.
• 37:29
  Furthermore, I was full of uneasiness as to what Bartleby could possibly be
• 37:32
  doing in my office, in his shirt sleeves and in an otherwise dismantled condition
• 37:37
  of a Sunday morning. Was anything amiss going on? Nay, that was
• 37:42
  out of the question. It was not to be thought of for a moment
• 37:45
  that Bartleby was an immoral person. But what could he be doing there?
• 37:49
  Copying Nay Again, whatever might be his eccentricities, Bartleby was an eminently decorous
• 37:54
  person. He would be the last man to sit down to his desk in
• 37:59
  any state approaching to nudity. Besides, it was Sunday, and there was
• 38:02
  something about Bartleby that forbade the supposition that he would, by any secular occupation,
• 38:08
  violate the proprieties of the day. Nevertheless, my mind was not pacified,
• 38:14
  and full of a restless curiosity. At last, I returned to the
• 38:17
  door without hindrance. I inserted my key, opened it, and entered.
• 38:22
  Bartleby was not to be seen. I looked round anxiously peeped behind his screen,
• 38:29
  but it was very plain that he was gone. Upon. More closely
• 38:32
  examining the place, I surmised that for an indefinite period Bartleby must have ate,
• 38:37
  dressed and slept in my office, and that too without plate, mirror
• 38:42
  or bed. The cushioned seat of a rickety old sofa in one corner bore,
• 38:46
  the faint impress of a lean reclining form rolled away. Under his desk,
• 38:52
  I found a blanket under the empty grate, a blacking box and brush
• 38:57
  on a chair, a tin basin with soat, and a ragged towel in
• 39:00
  a newspaper, a few crumbs of ginger nuts, and a morsel of cheese.
• 39:06
  Yes, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby has been making
• 39:08
  his home here, keeping Bachelor's Hall all by himself. Immediately then the thought
• 39:14
  came sweeping across me. What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here? Revealed?
• 39:21
  His poverty is great, but his solitude, how horrible. Think of it
• 39:24
  of a Sunday wall street is deserted as petra, and every night of every
• 39:30
  day it is an emptiness this building too, which of week days hums with
• 39:35
  industry, and life at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday
• 39:39
  is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home, sole spectator of a solitude
• 39:45
  which he has seen all populace, a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding
• 39:51
  among the ruins of Carthage end of Section two, Section three. For the
• 39:59
  first time in my life life, a feeling of overpowering, stinging melancholy seized
• 40:02
  me. Before I had never experienced aught, but a not unpleasing sadness.
• 40:08
  The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom, a fraternal
• 40:15
  melancholy, for both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the
• 40:20
  bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day in Gala trim swanlike sailing
• 40:25
  down the Mississippi of Broadway, and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist,
• 40:30
  and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem
• 40:35
  the world is gay, but misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there
• 40:39
  is none these sad fancyings. Shimmer is doubtless of a sick and silly brain.
• 40:46
  Led on to other and more special thoughts concerning the eccentricities of Bartleby.
• 40:52
  Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me. The scribner's pale form appeared to me,
• 40:59
  laid out among uncarrying strangers in its shivering winding sheet. Suddenly I was
• 41:05
  attracted by Bartleby's closed desk, the key and open sight left in the lock.
• 41:10
  I mean no mischief, seek the gratification of no heartless curiosity, thought
• 41:15
  I. Besides the desk is mine, and its contents too, so I
• 41:20
  will make bold to look within. Everything was methodically arranged, the papers smoothly
• 41:25
  placed. The pigeon holes were deep and removing the files of documents. I
• 41:30
  groped into their recesses. Presently I felt something there and dragged it out.
• 41:36
  It was an old bandana handkerchief, heavy and nodded. I opened it and
• 41:40
  saw it was a savings bank. I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which
• 41:45
  I had noted in the man. I remembered that he never spoke, but
• 41:49
  to answer that though at intervals he had considerable time to himself, yet I
• 41:53
  had never seen him reading. No, not even a newspaper, that for
• 41:58
  long periods, he would say, stand looking out at his pale window behind
• 42:01
  the screen upon the dead brick wall. I was quite sure he never visited
• 42:07
  any refectory or eating house, while his pale face clearly indicated that he never
• 42:12
  drank beer like turkey, or tea and coffee, even like other men,
• 42:16
  that he never went anywhere, in particular that I could learn, never went
• 42:21
  out for a walk, unless indeed that was the case at present, That
• 42:23
  he had declined telling who he was, or whence he came, or whether
• 42:28
  he had any relatives in the world. That though so thin and pale,
• 42:31
  he never complained of ill health. And more than all, I remembered a
• 42:36
  certain unconscious air of pallid, how shall I call it of pallid haughtiness say,
• 42:42
  or rather an austere reserve about him, which had positively awed me into
• 42:45
  my tame compliance with his eccentricities, when I had feared to ask him to
• 42:51
  do the slightest incidental thing for me, even though I might know from his
• 42:54
  long continued motionlessness that behind his screen he must be standing in one of those
• 43:00
  dead wall reveries of his revolving all these things and coupling them with the recently
• 43:06
  discovered fact that he made my office his constant, abiding place and home,
• 43:09
  and not forgetful of his morbid moodiness. Revolving all these things, a prudential
• 43:15
  feeling began to steal over me. My first emotions had been those of pure
• 43:20
  melancholy and sincere as pity. But just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby
• 43:25
  grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy emerge into fear,
• 43:30
  that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible too,
• 43:35
  that up to a certain point, the thought or sight of misery enlists our
• 43:39
  best affections. But in certain special cases, beyond that point, it does
• 43:44
  not. They heir, who would assert that invariably this is owing to the
• 43:49
  inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of
• 43:53
  remedying excessive and organic ill to a sensitive being. Pity is not seldom pain,
• 44:00
  and when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual
• 44:04
  succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it. What I saw that
• 44:08
  morning persuaded me that the Scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder.
• 44:15
  I might give alms to his body, but his body did not pain him.
• 44:17
  It was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.
• 44:22
  I did not accomplish the purpose of going to Trinity Church that morning.
• 44:27
  Somehow the things I had seen disqualified me for the time from church going.
• 44:31
  I walked homeward thinking what I would do with Bartleby. Finally I resolved upon
• 44:37
  this. I would put certain calm questions to him the next morning, touching
• 44:40
  his history, et cetera. And if he declined to answer them openly and
• 44:45
  unreservedly, and I supposed he would prefer not, then to give him a
• 44:50
  twenty dollar bill over and above whatever I might owe him, and tell him
• 44:53
  his services were no longer required, but that if in any other way I
• 44:58
  could assist him, I would be happy to do so, especially if he
• 45:01
  desired to return to his native place, wherever that might be, I would
• 45:06
  willingly help to defray the expenses. Moreover, if after reaching home, he
• 45:12
  found himself at any time and want of aid, a letter from him would
• 45:15
  be sure of a reply. The next morning came Bartleby, said I,
• 45:21
  gently, calling to him behind his screen. No reply, Bartleby said I,
• 45:27
  in a still gentler tone. Come here. I am not going to
• 45:30
  ask you to do anything you would prefer not to do. I simply wish
• 45:34
  to speak to you. Upon this, he noiselessly slid into view. Will
• 45:38
  you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born? I would prefer not
• 45:43
  to. Will you tell me anything about yourself? I would prefer not to.
• 45:50
  But what reasonable objection can you have to speak to me? I feel
• 45:52
  friendly towards you. He did not look at me while I spoke, but
• 45:57
  kept his glance fixed upon my bust of seero, which, as I then
• 46:00
  sat, was directly behind me, some six inches above my head. What
• 46:07
  is your answer, Bartleby, said I, after waiting a considerable time for
• 46:10
  a reply, during which his countenance remained immovable. Only there was the faintest
• 46:15
  conceivable tremor of the white attenuated mouth at present. I prefer to give no
• 46:21
  answer, he said, and retired into his hermitage. It was rather weak
• 46:27
  in me, I confess, but his manner on this occasion nettled me.
• 46:30
  Not only did there seem to lurk in it a certain calm disdain but his
• 46:35
  perverseness seemed ungrateful, considering the undeniable good usage and indulgence he had received from
• 46:40
  me. Again, I sat ruminating what I should do, mortified as I
• 46:45
  was at his behavior, and resolved as I had been to dismiss him when
• 46:50
  I entered my offices. Nevertheless, I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my
• 46:54
  heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for
• 46:59
  a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornist of mankind.
• 47:06
  At last, familiarly, drawing my chair behind his screen, I sat
• 47:08
  down and said, Bartleby, never mind then about revealing your history. But
• 47:15
  let me entreat you as a friend to comply, as far as may be,
• 47:17
  with usages of this office. Say now you will help to examine papers
• 47:22
  tomorrow or next day. In short, say now that in a day or
• 47:25
  two you will begin to be a little reasonable. Say so, Bartleby,
• 47:30
  at present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable, was his mildly
• 47:35
  cadaverous reply. Just then the folding doors opened and nippers approached. He seemed
• 47:40
  suffering from an unusually bad night's rest induced by severer indigestion than common. He
• 47:46
  overheard those final words of Bartleby prefer not, eh, gritted Nippers, I'd
• 47:52
  prefer him. If I were you, sir, addressing me, I'd prefer
• 47:57
  him. I'd give him preferences the stubborn mule. What is it, sir,
• 48:00
  pray that he prefers not to do? Now? Bartleby moved not a
• 48:05
  limb, mister Nippers said, I, I prefer that you would withdraw for
• 48:08
  the present. Somehow, of late I had got into the way of involuntarily
• 48:14
  using this word prefer upon all sorts of not exactly suitable occasions. And I
• 48:19
  trembled to think that my contact with the scrivener had already and seriously affected me
• 48:22
  in a mental way, and what further and deeper aberration might it not yet
• 48:28
  produce. This apprehension had not been without efficacy in determining me to my summary
• 48:32
  means. As Nippers, looking very sour and sulky, was departing Turkey blandly
• 48:38
  and deferentially approached with submission, Sir said he yesterday I was thinking about Bartleby
• 48:45
  here, and I think that if he would but prefer to take a quart
• 48:47
  of good ale every day. It would do much towards mending him and enabling
• 48:52
  him to assist in examining his papers. So you have got the word,
• 48:57
  too, said I, slightly excited with submission. What word, sir,
• 49:01
  asked Turkey, respectfully crowding himself into the contracted space behind the screen, and
• 49:07
  by so doing making me jostle the scrivener. What word, sir? I
• 49:10
  would prefer to be left alone here, said Bartleby, as if offended at
• 49:15
  being mobbed in his privacy. That's the word, Turkey said I. That's
• 49:20
  it. Oh prefer Oh, yes, queer word. I never use it
• 49:24
  myself. But sir, as I was saying, if he would but prefer
• 49:29
  Turkey, I interrupted, you will please withdraw. Oh certainly, sir,
• 49:34
  if you prefer that, I should. As he opened the folding door to
• 49:38
  retire nippers at his desk, caught a glimpse of me and asked whether I
• 49:42
  would prefer to have a certain paper copied on blue paper or white. He
• 49:46
  did not in the least roguishly accent the word prefer. It was plain that
• 49:51
  it involuntarily rolled from his tongue. I thought to myself, surely I must
• 49:55
  get rid of a demented man who already has in some degree he turned the
• 50:00
  tongues, if not the heads of myself and clerks. But I thought it
• 50:04
  prudent not to break the dismission at once. The next day I noticed that
• 50:08
  Bartleby did nothing but stand at his window in his dead wall reverie. Upon
• 50:14
  asking him why he did not write, he said that he had decided upon
• 50:17
  doing no more writing. Why how now? What next? Exclaimed? I
• 50:23
  do no more writing, no more? And what is the reason? Do
• 50:29
  you not see the reason for yourself? He indifferently replied. I looked steadfastly
• 50:35
  at him, and perceived that his eyes looked dull and glazed. Instantly,
• 50:38
  it occurred to me that his unexampled diligence in copying by his dim window for
• 50:44
  the first few weeks of his stay with me might have temporarily impaired his vision.
• 50:49
  I was touched. I said something in condolence with him. I hinted
• 50:53
  that, of course he did wisely in abstaining from writing for a while,
• 50:57
  and urged him to embrace that opportunity of taking wholesome exercise in the open air.
• 51:02
  This, however, he did not do. A few days after this,
• 51:06
  my other clerks, being absent, and being in a great hurry to
• 51:08
  dispatch certain letters by the mail, I thought that, having nothing else earthly
• 51:14
  to do, Bartleby would surely be less inflexible than usual and carry these letters
• 51:19
  to the post office. But he blankly declined, So much to my inconvenience,
• 51:23
  I went myself still added. Days went by. Whether Bartleby's eyes improved
• 51:30
  or not, I could not say. To all appearance, I thought they
• 51:32
  did, But when I asked him if they did, he vouchsafed no answer.
• 51:37
  At all events, he would do no copying. At last, in
• 51:40
  reply to my urgings, he informed me that he had permanently given up copying.
• 51:45
  What exclaimed, I suppose your eyes should get entirely well better than ever
• 51:51
  before. Would you not copy? Then? I have given up copying,
• 51:55
  he answered, and slid aside. He remained as ever a fixture in my
• 52:00
  chamber. Nay, if that were possible, he became still more of a
• 52:05
  fixture than before. What was to be done? He would do nothing in
• 52:08
  the office. Why should he stay there? In plain fact, he had
• 52:13
  now become a millstone to me, not only useless as a necklace, but
• 52:16
  afflictive to bear. Yet I was sorry for him. I speak less than
• 52:22
  truth when I say that on his own account he occasioned me uneasiness. If
• 52:28
  he would but have named a single relative or friend, I would instantly have
• 52:30
  written and urged their taking the poor fellow away to some convenient retreat. But
• 52:37
  he seemed alone, absolutely alone in the universe, a bit of wreck in
• 52:40
  the mid Atlantic. At length, necessities connected with my business tyrannized over all
• 52:45
  other considerations decently as I could. I told Bartleby that in six days time
• 52:52
  he must unconditionally leave the office. I warned him to take measures in the
• 52:57
  interval for procuring some other abode. I offered to assist him in this endeavor
• 53:01
  if he himself would but take the first step towards a removal. And when
• 53:07
  you finally quit me, Bartleby, added, I, I shall see that
• 53:09
  you go not away entirely unprovided six days from this hour. Remember, at
• 53:15
  the expiration of that period, I peeped behind the screen, and lo,
• 53:20
  Bartleby was there. I buttoned up my coat, balanced myself, advanced slowly
• 53:25
  towards him, touched his shoulder, and said, the time has come you
• 53:30
  must quit this place. I am sorry for you. Here is money,
• 53:34
  But you must go. I would prefer not, he replied, with his
• 53:37
  back still towards me. You must. He remained silent. Now I had
• 53:44
  an unbounded confidence in this man's common honesty. He had frequently restored to me
• 53:49
  sixpences and shillings carelessly dropped upon the floor. For I am apt to be
• 53:53
  very reckless in such shirt button affairs. The proceeding then, which followed will
• 53:59
  not be deemed extra ordinary. Bartleby said, I I owe you twelve dollars
• 54:02
  on account. Here are thirty two the odd twenty are yours? Will you
• 54:07
  take it? And I handed the bills towards him, but he made no
• 54:12
  motion. I will leave them here, then putting them under a weight on
• 54:15
  the table, then taking my hat and cane, and going to the door,
• 54:20
  I tranquility turned and added, after you have removed your things from these
• 54:23
  offices, Bartleby, you will of course lock the door, since every one
• 54:28
  is now gone for the day, but you, and if you please slip
• 54:30
  your key underneath the mat so that I may have it in the morning,
• 54:35
  I shall not see you again. So good bye to you. If hereafter,
• 54:39
  in your new place of abode, I can be of any service to
• 54:42
  you, do not fail to advise me by letter, goodbye Bartleby, and
• 54:46
  fare you well. But he answered not a word. Like the last column
• 54:51
  of some ruined temple. He remained standing, mute and solitary in the middle
• 54:55
  of the otherwise deserted room. As I walked home in a pensive mood,
• 55:00
  my vanity got the better of my pity. I could not but highly plume
• 55:04
  myself on my masterly management in getting rid of Bartleby. Masterly I call it,
• 55:08
  and such it must appear to any dispassionate thinker. The beauty of my
• 55:13
  procedure seemed to consist in its perfect quietness. There was no vulgar bullying,
• 55:19
  no bravado of any sort, no choleric hectoring and striding to and fro across
• 55:23
  the apartment, jerking out vehement commands for Bartleby to bundle himself off with his
• 55:28
  beggarly traps. Nothing of the kind. Without loudly bidding Bartleby depart, as
• 55:34
  an inferior genius might have done. I assumed the ground that depart he must,
• 55:38
  and upon that assumption built all I had to say. The more I
• 55:43
  thought over my procedure, the more, I was charmed with it. Nevertheless,
• 55:46
  next morning, upon awakening, I had my doubts I had somehow slept
• 55:52
  off the fumes of vanity. One of the coolest and wisest hours a man
• 55:55
  has is just after he awakes. In the morning, my proceeding seemed as
• 56:00
  sagacious as ever, but only in theory how it would prove in practice there
• 56:05
  was the rub. It was truly a beautiful thought to have assumed Bartleby's departure,
• 56:09
  but after all that assumption was simply my own, and none of Bartleby's.
• 56:15
  The great point was not whether I had assumed that he would quit me,
• 56:19
  but whether he would prefer so to do. He was more a man
• 56:22
  of preferences than assumptions. After breakfast, I walked downtown, arguing the probabilities,
• 56:29
  pro and con One moment I thought it would prove a miserable failure,
• 56:32
  and Bartleby would be found all alive at my office as usual. The next
• 56:37
  moment, it seemed certain that I should see his chair empty, and so
• 56:40
  I kept veering about. At the corner of Broadway and Canal Street, I
• 56:45
  saw quite an excited group of people standing in earnest conversation I'll take odds.
• 56:51
  He doesn't, said a voice as I passed, doesn't go done, said
• 56:55
  I put up your money. I was instinctively putting my hand in my pocket
• 57:00
  to produce my own when I remembered that this was an election day. The
• 57:04
  words I had overheard bore no reference to Bartleby, but to the success or
• 57:07
  non success of some candidate for the mayoralty. In my intent frame of mind,
• 57:14
  I had, as it were, imagined that all Broadways shared in my
• 57:16
  excitement and were debating the same question with me. I passed on, very
• 57:22
  thankful that the uproar of the street screened my momentary absent mindedness. As I
• 57:28
  had intended, I was earlier than usual. At my office door, I
• 57:31
  stood listening for a moment. All was still. He must be gone.
• 57:36
  I tried the knob. The door was locked. Yes, my procedure had
• 57:40
  worked to a charm. He indeed must be vanished. Yet a certain melancholy
• 57:45
  mixed with this. I was almost sorry for my brilliant success. I was
• 57:50
  fumbling under the door mat for the key, which Bartleby was to have left
• 57:53
  there for me, when accidentally my knee knocked against a panel, producing a
• 57:58
  summoning sound, and in response a voice came to me from within. Not
• 58:01
  yet I am occupied. It was Bartleby. I was thunderstruck. For an
• 58:07
  instant. I stood like the man who pipe in mouth was killed one cloudless
• 58:12
  afternoon long ago in Virginia by a summer lightning at his own warm open window.
• 58:16
  He was killed and remained leaning out there upon the dreamy afternoon till some
• 58:21
  one touched him when he fell. Not gone, I murmured at last,
• 58:25
  but again, obeying that wondrous ascendency which the inscrutable scrivener had over me,
• 58:30
  and from which ascendency, for all my chafing I could not completely escape.
• 58:36
  I slowly went downstairs and out into the street, and while walking round the
• 58:39
  block, considered what I should next do in this unheard of perplexity. Turn
• 58:45
  the man out by an actual thrusting. I could not to drive him away
• 58:50
  by calling him hard names would not do. Calling in the police was an
• 58:53
  unpleasant idea, and yet permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over me.
• 59:00
  This too, I could not think of what was to be done, or
• 59:02
  if nothing could be done, Was there anything further that I could assume in
• 59:07
  the matter yes, as before I had prospectively assumed that Bartleby would depart,
• 59:12
  so now I might retrospectively assume that departed he was. In the legitimate carrying
• 59:17
  out of this assumption, I might enter my office in a great hurry,
• 59:22
  and, pretending not to see Bartleby at all, walk straight against him as
• 59:25
  if he were heir. Such a proceeding would in a singular degree, have
• 59:30
  the appearance of a home thrust. It was hardly possible that Bartleby could withstand
• 59:35
  such an application of the doctrine of assumptions. But upon second thoughts, the
• 59:39
  success of the plan seemed rather dubious. I resolved to argue the matter over
• 59:45
  with him again. Bartleby said I, entering the office with a quietly severe
• 59:50
  expression. I am seriously displeased. I am pained, Bartleby. I had
• 59:54
  thought better of you. I had imagined you of such a gentlemanly organizedation that
• 1:00:00
  in any delicate dilemma a slight hint would have suffice in short an assumption.
• 1:00:07
  But it appears I am deceived, why, I added, unaffectedly, starting
• 1:00:12
  you have not even touched that money, yet, pointing to it just where
• 1:00:15
  I had left it. The evening previous, He answered nothing, Will you
• 1:00:20
  or will you not quit me? I now demanded in a sudden passion,
• 1:00:22
  advancing close to him. I would prefer not to quit you, he replied,
• 1:00:28
  gently, emphasizing the knot. What earthly right have you to stay here?
• 1:00:32
  Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my taxes? Or is
• 1:00:36
  this property yours? He answered nothing? Are you ready to go on and
• 1:00:40
  write? Now? Are your eyes recovered? Could you copy a small paper
• 1:00:45
  for me this morning, or help examine a few lines, or step round
• 1:00:49
  to the post office? In a word, will you do anything at all
• 1:00:52
  to give a coloring to your refusal to depart the premises? He silently retired
• 1:00:58
  into his hermitage. I was now in such a state of nervous resentment that
• 1:01:01
  I thought it but prudent to check myself at present from further demonstrations. Bartleby
• 1:01:07
  and I were alone. I remembered the tragedy of the unfortunate Atoms and the
• 1:01:12
  still more unfortunate Cult in the solitary office of the latter, and how poor
• 1:01:16
  Cult, being dreadfully incensed by Adams and imprudently permitting himself to get wildly excited,
• 1:01:22
  was at unawares hurried into his fatal act, an act which certainly no
• 1:01:27
  man could possibly deplore more than the actor himself. Often, it had occurred
• 1:01:31
  to me in my ponderings upon the subject, that had that altercation taken place
• 1:01:37
  in the public street or at a private residence, it would not have terminated
• 1:01:40
  as it did. It was the circumstance of being alone in a solitary office
• 1:01:45
  upstairs of a building entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic associations, an uncarpeted office,
• 1:01:52
  doubtless of a dusty, haggard sort of appearance. This, it must have
• 1:01:57
  been, which greatly helped to enhance the ear irritable desperation of the hapless cult.
• 1:02:02
  But when this old atom of resentment rose in me and tempted me concerning
• 1:02:07
  Bartleby, I grappled him and threw him. How why simply by recalling the
• 1:02:12
  divine injunction a new commandment, give I unto you, that ye love one
• 1:02:16
  another. Yes, this it was that saved me. Aside from higher considerations,
• 1:02:23
  charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent principle, a great safeguard
• 1:02:29
  to its possessor. Men have committed murder for jealousy's sake, and anger's sake,
• 1:02:34
  and hatred's sake, and selfishness sake, and spiritual pride sake. But
• 1:02:38
  no man that I ever heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet
• 1:02:44
  charity's sake mere self interest. Then, if no better motive can be enlisted,
• 1:02:49
  should, especially with high tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and
• 1:02:52
  philanthropy at any rate. Upon the occasion in question, I strove to drown
• 1:02:58
  my exasperated fees feelings towards the scrivener by benevolently construing his conduct poor fellow.
• 1:03:05
  Poor fellow, thought I, he don't mean anything, and besides, he
• 1:03:09
  has seen hard times and ought to be indulged. I endeavored also immediately to
• 1:03:15
  occupy myself and at the same time to comfort my despondency. I tried to
• 1:03:20
  fancy that, in the course of the morning, at such time as might
• 1:03:23
  prove agreeable to him, bartleby, of his own free accord, what emerged
• 1:03:28
  from his hermitage and take up some decided line of march in the direction of
• 1:03:31
  the door. But no. Half past twelve o'clock came. Turkey began to
• 1:03:37
  glow in the face, overturn his inkstand, and become generally obstreperous. Nippers
• 1:03:42
  abated down into quietude and courtesy. Ginger Nut munched his noon apple, and
• 1:03:46
  Bartleby remained standing at his window in one of his profoundest dead wall reveries.
• 1:03:52
  Will it be credited? Ought I to acknowledge it. That afternoon I left
• 1:03:57
  the office without saying one further word to end of section three Section four.
• 1:04:04
  Some days now passed, during which, at leisure intervals I looked a little
• 1:04:09
  into Edwards on the will and priestly on necessity. Under the circumstances, those
• 1:04:15
  books induced a salutary feeling. Gradually I slid into the persuasion that these troubles
• 1:04:20
  of mine, touching the scrivener, had been all predestinated from eternity, and
• 1:04:26
  Bartleby was billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose of an all wise providence,
• 1:04:31
  which it was not for a mere mortal like me to fathom. Yes,
• 1:04:35
  Bartleby, stay there behind your screen, thought I I shall persecute you no
• 1:04:41
  more. You are harmless and noiseless as any of these old chairs. In
• 1:04:45
  short, I never feel so private as when I know you are here at
• 1:04:49
  last, I see it, I feel it. I penetrate to the predestinated
• 1:04:54
  purpose of my life. I am content. Others may have loftier parts to
• 1:04:59
  enact. But my mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you
• 1:05:02
  with office room for such period as you may see fit to remain. I
• 1:05:08
  believe that this wise and blessed frame of mind would have continued with me had
• 1:05:12
  it not been for the unsolicited and uncharitable remarks obtruded upon me by my professional
• 1:05:17
  friends who visited the rooms. But thus it often is that the constant friction
• 1:05:24
  of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
• 1:05:29
  Though to be sure, when I reflected upon it, it was not strange
• 1:05:32
  that people entering my office should be struck by the peculiar aspect of the unaccountable
• 1:05:38
  Bartleby, and so be tempted to throw out some sinister observations concerning him.
• 1:05:45
  Sometimes an attorney having business with me, and calling at my office, and
• 1:05:48
  finding no one but the scrivener there, would undertake to obtain some sort of
• 1:05:54
  precise information from him touching my whereabouts, but without heeding his idle Toalpes Bartleby
• 1:06:00
  would remain standing immovable in the middle of the room. So after contemplating him
• 1:06:05
  in that position for a time, the attorney would depart no wiser than he
• 1:06:10
  came. Also, when a reference was going on and the room full of
• 1:06:14
  lawyers and witnesses and business was driving fast, some deeply occupied legal gentleman present,
• 1:06:20
  seeing Bartleby, wholly unemployed, would request him to run round to his
• 1:06:26
  the legal gentleman's office, and fetch some papers for him. Thereupon Bartleby would
• 1:06:30
  tranquility decline, and yet remain idle as before. Then the lawyer would give
• 1:06:36
  a great stare and turn to me, And what could I say? At
• 1:06:41
  last I was made aware that all through the circle of my professional acquaintance,
• 1:06:45
  a whisper of wonder was running round, having reference to the strange creature I
• 1:06:49
  kept at my office. This worried me very much, and as the idea
• 1:06:55
  came upon me of his possibly turning out a long lived man and keep occupying
• 1:07:00
  my chambers and denying my authority, and perplexing my visitors, and scandalizing my
• 1:07:06
  professional reputation, and casting a general gloom over the premises. Keeping soul and
• 1:07:13
  body together to the last upon his savings. For doubtless he spent but half
• 1:07:16
  a dime a day, and in the end perhaps outlive me, and claimed
• 1:07:20
  possession of my office by right of his perpetual occupancy. As all these dark
• 1:07:27
  anticipations crowded upon me more and more, and my friends continually intruded their relentless
• 1:07:32
  remarks upon the apparition in my room, a great change was wrought in me.
• 1:07:38
  I resolved to gather all my faculties together and forever rid me of this
• 1:07:42
  intolerable incubus ere revolving any complicated project, however, adapted to this end,
• 1:07:49
  I first simply suggested to bartleby the propriety of his permanent departure. In a
• 1:07:55
  calm and serious tone, I commended the idea to his careful and mature consideration.
• 1:08:00
  But having taken three days to meditate upon it, he apprized me that
• 1:08:04
  his original determination remained the same, In short, that he still preferred to
• 1:08:10
  abide with me. What shall I do? I now said to myself,
• 1:08:15
  buttoning up my coat to the last button. What shall I do? What
• 1:08:17
  ought I to do? What does conscience say I should do with this man?
• 1:08:23
  Or rather ghost rid myself of him? I must go, he shall,
• 1:08:28
  But how you will not thrust him, the poor, pale, passive
• 1:08:32
  mortal. You will not thrust such a helpless creature out of your door.
• 1:08:36
  You will not dishonor yourself by such cruelty. No I will not. I
• 1:08:42
  cannot do that. Rather, would I let him live and die here,
• 1:08:45
  and then mason up his remains in the wall. What then will you do?
• 1:08:49
  For all your coaxing, he will not budge, bribes. He leaves
• 1:08:54
  under your own paper weight on your table. In short, it is quite
• 1:08:57
  plain that he prefers to cling to you. Then something severe, something unusual,
• 1:09:01
  must be done. What surely you will not have him collared by a
• 1:09:05
  constable and commit his innocent pallor to the common jail? And upon what ground
• 1:09:11
  could you procure such a thing to be done? A vagrant? Is he?
• 1:09:15
  What? He a vagrant? A wanderer who refuses to budge? It
• 1:09:19
  is because he will not be a vagrant. Then that you seek to count
• 1:09:23
  him as a vagrant, That is too absurd. No visible means of support?
• 1:09:28
  There I have him wrong again, For indubitably he does support himself.
• 1:09:32
  And that is the only unanswerable proof that any man can show of his possessing
• 1:09:36
  the means so to do no more. Then, since he will not quit
• 1:09:42
  me, I must quit him. I will change my offices. I will
• 1:09:45
  move elsewhere, and give him fair notice that if I find him on my
• 1:09:48
  new premises, I will then proceed against him as a common trespasser, acting
• 1:09:56
  accordingly. Next day, I thus addressed him, I find these chambers too
• 1:10:00
  far from the city Hall. The air is unwholesome. In a word,
• 1:10:04
  I propose to remove my offices next week, and shall no longer require your
• 1:10:09
  services. I tell you this now in order that you may seek another place.
• 1:10:15
  He made no reply, and nothing more was said. On the appointed
• 1:10:18
  day, I engaged carts and men proceeded to my chambers, and, having
• 1:10:24
  but little furniture, everything was removed in a few hours. Throughout the scrivener
• 1:10:29
  remained standing behind the screen which I directed to be removed. The last thing.
• 1:10:34
  It was withdrawn and being folded up like a huge folio, left him
• 1:10:39
  the motionless occupant of a naked room. I stood in the entry watching him
• 1:10:44
  a moment while something from within me upbraided me. I re entered with my
• 1:10:49
  hand in my pocket and and my heart in my mouth. Good Bye.
• 1:10:55
  Bartleby, I am going good bye, and God some way bless you.
• 1:11:00
  And take that slipping something in his hand, but it dropped upon the floor,
• 1:11:04
  and then, strange to say, I tore myself from him, whom
• 1:11:08
  I had so longed to be rid of. Established in my new quarters,
• 1:11:14
  for a day or two, I kept the door locked and started at every
• 1:11:17
  footfall in the passages. When I returned to my rooms after any little absence,
• 1:11:23
  I would pause at the threshold for an instant and attentively listen, ere
• 1:11:28
  applying my key. But these fears were needless. Bartleby never came nigh me.
• 1:11:34
  I thought all was going well when a perturbed looking stranger visited me,
• 1:11:39
  inquiring whether I was the person who had recently occupied rooms at number Wall Street
• 1:11:46
  full of forebodings. I replied that I was. Then, sir, said
• 1:11:51
  the stranger, who proved a lawyer. You are responsible for the man you
• 1:11:56
  left there. He refuses to do any copying, He refuses to do anything
• 1:12:00
  he says he prefers not to, and he refuses to quit the premises.
• 1:12:04
  I am very sorry, sir, said I, with assumed tranquility, but
• 1:12:09
  an inward tremor. But really the man you allude to is nothing to me.
• 1:12:14
  He is no relation or apprentice of mine that you should hold me responsible
• 1:12:17
  for him. In Mercy's name. Who is he? I certainly cannot inform
• 1:12:24
  you. I know nothing about him. Formerly I employed him as a copyist,
• 1:12:28
  but he has done nothing for me. Now for some time past,
• 1:12:32
  I shall settle him. Then, good morning, sir. Several days passed
• 1:12:39
  and I heard nothing more. And though I often felt a charitable prompting to
• 1:12:43
  call at the place and see poor Bartleby, yet a certain squeamishness of I
• 1:12:47
  know not what withheld me. All is over with him by this time,
• 1:12:51
  thought I at last, when through another week no further intelligence reached me.
• 1:12:58
  But coming to my room the day after, I found several persons waiting at
• 1:13:01
  my door in a high state of nervous excitement. That's the man, here
• 1:13:05
  he comes, cried the foremost one, whom I recognized as the lawyer who
• 1:13:11
  had previously called upon me alone. You must take him away, sir.
• 1:13:15
  At once cried a portly person among them, advancing upon me, and whom
• 1:13:19
  I knew to be the landlord of Number Wall Street. These gentlemen, my
• 1:13:24
  tenants, cannot stand it any longer. Mister B, pointing to the lawyer,
• 1:13:30
  has turned him out of his room, and he now persists in haunting
• 1:13:32
  the building, generally sitting upon the banisters of the stairs by day and sleeping
• 1:13:39
  in the entry by night. Everybody is concerned, clients are leaving the offices,
• 1:13:45
  some fears are entertained of a mob. Something you must do, and
• 1:13:47
  that without delay. Aghast at this, torrent I fell back before it,
• 1:13:54
  and would fain have locked myself in my new quarters in Vain. I persisted
• 1:13:59
  that Bartleby was nothing to me, no more than to any one else in
• 1:14:03
  Vain. I was the last person known to have anything to do with him,
• 1:14:08
  and they held me to the terrible account. Fearful then of being exposed
• 1:14:13
  in the papers, as one person present obscurely threatened, I considered the matter,
• 1:14:17
  and at length said that if the lawyer would give me a confidential interview
• 1:14:23
  with the scrivener in his the lawyer's own room, I would that afternoon strive
• 1:14:28
  my best to rid them of the nuisance they complained of. Going upstairs to
• 1:14:32
  my old haunt, there was Bartleby, silently sitting upon the banister at the
• 1:14:36
  landing. What are you doing here, Bartleby said, I sitting upon the
• 1:14:42
  banister. He mildly replied. I motioned him into the lawyer's room, who
• 1:14:46
  then left us. Bartleby said, I are you aware that you are the
• 1:14:50
  cause of great tribulation to me by persisting in occupying the entry after being dismissed
• 1:14:57
  from the office. No answer. Now, one of two things must take
• 1:15:01
  place. Either you must do something or something must be done to you.
• 1:15:05
  Now, what sort of business would you like to engage in? Would you
• 1:15:10
  like to re engage in copying for some one? No, I would prefer
• 1:15:14
  not to make any change. Would you like a clerkship in a dry goods
• 1:15:17
  store? There is too much confinement about that. No, I would not
• 1:15:23
  like clerkship, But I am not particular. Too much confinement, I cried,
• 1:15:29
  Why you keep yourself confined all the time. I would prefer not to
• 1:15:32
  take a clerkship, he rejoined, as if to settle that little item at
• 1:15:36
  once. How would a bartender's business suit you? There is no trying of
• 1:15:41
  the eye sight in that. I would not like it at all, though,
• 1:15:45
  as I said before, I am not particular. His unwonted wordiness inspirited
• 1:15:50
  me. I returned to the charge. Well, then, would you like
• 1:15:55
  to travel through the country collecting bills for the merchants that would improve your health?
• 1:16:00
  No, I would prefer to be doing something else. How then,
• 1:16:03
  would going as a companion to Europe to entertain some young gentleman with your conversation?
• 1:16:09
  How would that suit you? Not at all? It does not strike
• 1:16:13
  me that there is anything definite about that. I like to be stationary,
• 1:16:17
  but I am not particular stationary. You shall be, then, I cried,
• 1:16:21
  now, losing all patience, and for the first time in all my
• 1:16:25
  exasperating connection with him, fairly flying into a passion. If you do not
• 1:16:30
  go away from these premises before night, I shall feel bound. Indeed,
• 1:16:34
  I am bound to to to quit the premises myself, I rather absurdly concluded,
• 1:16:42
  knowing not with what possible threat to try to frighten his immobility into compliance.
• 1:16:47
  Despairing of all further efforts, I was precipitately leaving him. When a
• 1:16:53
  final thought occurred to me, one which had not been wholly unindulged before Partleby,
• 1:16:59
  said I, in the kindest tone I could assume, under such exciting
• 1:17:02
  circumstances, will you go home with me? Now not to my office,
• 1:17:08
  but my dwelling, and remain there till we can conclude upon some convenient arrangement
• 1:17:13
  for you at our leisure. Come let us start now right away. No,
• 1:17:17
  at present, I would prefer not to make any change at all.
• 1:17:23
  I answered nothing, but, effectually, dodging every one by the suddenness and
• 1:17:27
  rapidity of my flight, rushed from the building, ran up Wall Street towards
• 1:17:31
  Broadway, and, jumping into the first omnibus, was soon removed from pursuit.
• 1:17:38
  As soon as tranquility returned, I distinctly perceived that I had now done
• 1:17:42
  all that I possibly could, both in respect to the demands of the landlord
• 1:17:46
  and his tenants, and with regard to my own desire and sense of duty
• 1:17:50
  to benefit Bartleby and shield him from rude persecution. I now strove to be
• 1:17:57
  entirely care free and quiescent, and my conscience justified me in the attempt,
• 1:18:02
  though indeed it was not so successful as I could have wished. So fearful
• 1:18:08
  was I of being again hunted out by the incensed landlord and his exasperated tenants,
• 1:18:14
  that surrendering my business to Nippers for a few days, I drove about
• 1:18:17
  the upper part of the town and through the suburbs in my rockaway, crossed
• 1:18:23
  over to Jersey City and Hoboken, and paid fugitive visits to Manhattanville and Astoria.
• 1:18:29
  In fact, I almost lived in my rockaway for the time. When
• 1:18:32
  again I entered my office, lo a note from the landlord lay upon the
• 1:18:38
  desk. I opened it with trembling hands. It informed me that the rider
• 1:18:43
  had sent to the police and had Bartleby removed to the tombs as a vagrant.
• 1:18:47
  Moreover, since I knew more about him than any one else, he
• 1:18:51
  wished me to appear at that place and make a suitable statement of the facts.
• 1:18:56
  These tidings had a conflicting effect upon me. At first I was indignant,
• 1:19:00
  but at last almost approved. The Landlord's energetic summary disposition had led him
• 1:19:06
  to adopt a procedure which I do not think I would have decided upon myself,
• 1:19:13
  And yet as a last resort under such peculiar circumstances, it seemed the
• 1:19:17
  only plan. As I afterwards learned, the poor Scrivener, when told that
• 1:19:23
  he must be conducted to the tombs, offered not the slightest obstacle, but
• 1:19:28
  in his pale unmoving way, silently acquiesced. Some of the compassionate and curious
• 1:19:34
  bystanders joined the party, and, headed by one of the constables, arm
• 1:19:39
  in arm with Bartleby, the silent procession filed its way through all the noise
• 1:19:44
  and heat and joy of the roaring thoroughfares. At noon the same day I
• 1:19:48
  received the note, I went to the tombs, or, to speak more
• 1:19:51
  properly, the halls of justice, seeking the right officer. I stated the
• 1:19:57
  purpose of my call, and was informed that the individual I described was indeed
• 1:20:01
  within I then assured the functionary that Bartleby was a perfectly honest man, and
• 1:20:08
  greatly to be compassionated, however unaccountably eccentric. I narrated all I knew,
• 1:20:15
  and closed by suggesting the idea of letting him remain in as indulgent confinement as
• 1:20:19
  possible till something less harsh might be done, though indeed I hardly knew what
• 1:20:26
  at all events, if nothing else could be decided upon, the almshouse must
• 1:20:30
  receive him. I then begged to have an interview. Being under no disgraceful
• 1:20:34
  charge, and quite serene and harmless in all his ways, they had permitted
• 1:20:40
  him freely to wander about the prison, and especially in the enclosed grass platted
• 1:20:45
  yard thereof, And so I found him there, standing all alone in the
• 1:20:49
  quietest of the yards, his face towards a high wall, while all around
• 1:20:55
  from the narrow slits of the jail windows, I thought I saw peering out
• 1:21:00
  upon him the eyes of murderers and thieves. Bartleby, I know you,
• 1:21:05
  he said, without looking round, And I want nothing to say to you.
• 1:21:11
  It was not I that brought you here, Bartleby, said, I,
• 1:21:14
  keenly pained at his implied suspicion. And to you, this should not
• 1:21:17
  be so vile a place. Nothing reproachful attaches to you by being here.
• 1:21:23
  And see it is not so sad a place as one might think. Look
• 1:21:27
  there is the sky, and here is the grass. I know where I
• 1:21:30
  am, he replied, but would say nothing more, and so I left
• 1:21:34
  him. As I entered the corridor again, a broad, meat like man
• 1:21:39
  in an apron accosted me, and, jerking his thumb over his shoulders,
• 1:21:43
  said, is that your friend? Yes? Does he want to starve?
• 1:21:47
  If he does, let him live on the prison fare, that's all?
• 1:21:53
  Who are you? Asked I, not knowing what to make of such an
• 1:21:56
  unofficially speaking person in such a place. I I am the grub man.
• 1:22:00
  Such gentlemen as have friends here, hire me to provide them with something good
• 1:22:04
  to eat? Is this so? Said I, turning to the turnkey.
• 1:22:10
  He said it was well, then said I, slipping some silver into the
• 1:22:14
  grub Man's hands, for so they called him. I want you to give
• 1:22:17
  particular attention to my friend there. Let him have the best dinner you can
• 1:22:21
  get, and you must be as polite to him as possible. Introduce me,
• 1:22:27
  will you, said the grub man, looking at me with an expression
• 1:22:30
  which seemed to say he was all impatience for an opportunity to give a specimen
• 1:22:34
  of his breeding. Thinking it would prove of benefit to the scrivener, I
• 1:22:39
  acquiesced, and asking the grub man his name, went up with him to
• 1:22:43
  Bartleby. Bartleby. This is mister Cutlet's you will find him very useful to
• 1:22:47
  you, your sarvant sir, your servant, said the grub man, making
• 1:22:53
  a low salutation behind his apron Hope you find it pleasant here, sir,
• 1:22:58
  spacious, grounds cool apart, sir, hope you'll stay with us some time.
• 1:23:02
  Try to make it agreeable, may missus Cutlet's and I have the pleasure
• 1:23:05
  of your company to dinner, sir, in missus Cutlet's private room. I
• 1:23:11
  prefer not to dine to day, said Bartleby turning away. It would disagree
• 1:23:15
  with me. I am unused to dinners, so saying, he slowly moved
• 1:23:19
  to the other side of the enclosure and took up a position fronting the dead
• 1:23:24
  wall. How's this, said the grub man, addressing me with a stare
• 1:23:29
  of astonishment. He's odd, ain't he? I think he is a little
• 1:23:32
  deranged, said I, sadly deranged? Deranged? Is it well? Now?
• 1:23:38
  Upon my word? I thought that friend of Yorn was a gentleman forger.
• 1:23:43
  They are always pale and genteel, like them forgers. I can't pity
• 1:23:46
  him, can't help it, sir, did you know Monroe? Edwards,
• 1:23:49
  he added touchingly and paused, then, laying his hand pityingly on my shoulder,
• 1:23:55
  sighed he died of consumption at sing sing. So you weren't acquainted with
• 1:24:00
  Monroe? No, I was never socially acquainted with any forgers. But I
• 1:24:04
  cannot stop longer. Look to my friend yonder. You will not lose by
• 1:24:09
  it, I will see you again. Some few days after this, I
• 1:24:13
  again obtained admission to the tombs and went through the corridors in quest of Bartleby,
• 1:24:17
  but without finding him. I saw him coming from his cell not long
• 1:24:21
  ago, said a turnkey. Maybe he's gone to loiter in the yards.
• 1:24:27
  So I went in that direction. Are you looking for the silent man?
• 1:24:30
  Said another turnkey, passing me yonder, He lies sleeping in the yard.
• 1:24:34
  There tis not twenty minutes since I saw him lie down. The yard was
• 1:24:40
  entirely quiet. It was not accessible to the common prisoners. The surrounding walls
• 1:24:45
  of amazing thickness kept off all sounds behind them. The Egyptian character of the
• 1:24:51
  masonry weighed upon me with its gloom. But a soft, imprisoned turf grew
• 1:24:56
  underfoot the heart of the eternal pyramids, wherein by some strange magic, through
• 1:25:02
  the clefts, grass seed dropped by birds had sprung strangely. Huddled at the
• 1:25:09
  base of the wall, his knees drawn up and lying on his side,
• 1:25:13
  his head touching the cold stones. I saw the wasted Bartleby, but nothing
• 1:25:17
  stirred. I paused, then went close up to him, stooped over,
• 1:25:24
  and saw that his dim eyes were open. Otherwise he seemed profoundly sleeping.
• 1:25:30
  Something prompted me to touch him. I felt his hand, when a tingling
• 1:25:33
  shiver ran up my arm and down my spine to my feet. The round
• 1:25:39
  face of the grub man peered upon me. Now his dinner is ready.
• 1:25:43
  Won't he dine to day? Either? Or does he live without dining?
• 1:25:47
  Lives without dining, said I, and closed his eyes. Eh, he's
• 1:25:53
  asleep. Any with kings and counselors, murmured I, there would seem little
• 1:26:00
  need for proceeding further in this history. Imagination will readily supply the meager recital
• 1:26:06
  of poor Bartleby's interment. But ere parting with the reader, let me say
• 1:26:12
  that if this little narrative has sufficiently interested him to awaken curiosity as to who
• 1:26:17
  Bartleby was and what manner of life he led prior to the present narrators making
• 1:26:23
  his acquaintance, I can only reply that in such curiosity I fully share,
• 1:26:28
  but am wholly unable to gratify it. Yet here I hardly know whether I
• 1:26:32
  should divulge. One little item of rumor which came to my ear a few
• 1:26:36
  months after the scrivener's decease, upon what basis it rested I could never ascertain,
• 1:26:43
  and hence how true it is I cannot now tell. But inasmuch as
• 1:26:47
  this vague report has not been without certain strange suggestive interest to me, however
• 1:26:53
  sad it may prove the same with some others, and so I will briefly
• 1:26:58
  mention it the report or it was this, that Bartleby had been a subordinate
• 1:27:02
  clerk in the dead letter office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly
• 1:27:06
  removed by a change in the administration. When I think over this rumour,
• 1:27:12
  I cannot adequately express the emotions which seize me dead letters. Does it not
• 1:27:17
  sound like dead men conceive a man, by nature and misfortune, prone to
• 1:27:23
  a pallid hopelessness. Can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that
• 1:27:28
  of continually handling these dead letters and assorting them for the flames, For by
• 1:27:32
  the cartload they are annually burned. Sometimes from out the folded paper, the
• 1:27:38
  pale clerk takes a ring the finger. It was meant for, perhaps molders
• 1:27:43
  in the grave, A banknote sent in swiftest charity, he whom it would
• 1:27:46
  relieve, nor eats, nor hungers any more. Pardon for those who died
• 1:27:51
  despairing hope, for those who died unhoping good tidings for those who died stifled
• 1:27:58
  by unrelieved calamities on errands of life, These letters speed to death, AH
• 1:28:04
  Bartleby, AH Humanity, The End