Bartleby, The Scrivener | Page 4

my chambers, Nippers would sometimes impatiently rise from
his seat, and stooping over his table, spread his arms wide apart, seize the whole desk,
and move it, and jerk it, with a grim, grinding motion on the floor, as if the table were a
perverse voluntary agent, intent on thwarting and vexing him; I plainly perceive that for
Nippers, brandy and water were altogether superfluous.
It was fortunate for me that, owing to its peculiar cause--indigestion--the irritability and
consequent nervousness of Nippers, were mainly observable in the morning, while in the
afternoon he was comparatively mild. So that Turkey's paroxysms only coming on about
twelve o'clock, I never had to do with their eccentricities at one time. Their fits relieved
each other like guards. When Nippers' was on, Turkey's was off; and vice versa. This was
a good natural arrangement under the circumstances.
Ginger Nut, the third on my list, was a lad some twelve years old. His father was a
carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of a cart, before he died. So he
sent him to my office as student at law, errand boy, and cleaner and sweeper, at the rate
of one dollar a week. He had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much. Upon
inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array of the shells of various sorts of nuts. Indeed,
to this quick-witted youth the whole noble science of the law was contained in a nut-shell.
Not the least among the employments of Ginger Nut, as well as one which he discharged
with the most alacrity, was his duty as cake and apple purveyor for Turkey and Nippers.
Copying law papers being proverbially dry, husky sort of business, my two scriveners
were fain to moisten their mouths very often with Spitzenbergs to be had at the numerous
stalls night the Custom House and Post Office. Also, they sent Ginger Nut very
frequently for that peculiar cake--small, flat, round, and very spicy--after which he had
been named by them. Of a cold morning when business was but dull, Turkey would
gobble up scores of these cakes, as if they were mere wafers--indeed they sell them at the
rate of six or eight for a penny--the scrape of his pen blending with the crunching of the
crisp particles in his mouth. Of all the fiery afternoon blunders and flurried rashnesses of
Turkey, was his once moistening a ginger-cake between his lips, and clapping it on to a
mortgage for a seal. I came within an ace of dismissing him then. But he mollified me by
making an oriental bow, and saying--"With submission, sir, it was generous of me to find
you in stationery on my own account."
Now my original business--that of a conveyancer and title hunter, and drawer-up of
recondite documents of all sorts--was considerably increased by receiving the master's
office. There was now great work for scriveners. Not only must I push the clerks already
with me, but I must have additional help. In answer to my advertisement, a motionless
young man one morning, stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was
summer. I can see that figure now--pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn!
It was Bartleby.
After a few words touching his qualifications, I engage him, glad to have among my
corps of copyists a man of so singularly sedate an aspect, which I thought might operate
beneficially upon the flighty temper of Turkey, and the fiery one of Nippers.
I should have stated before that ground glass folding-doors divided my premises into two
parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners, the other by myself. According to my
humor I threw open these doors, or closed them. I resolved to assign Bartleby a corner by
the folding-doors, but on my side of them, so as to have this quiet man within easy call,
in case any trifling thing was to be done. I placed his desk close up to a small

side-window in that part of the room, a window which originally had afforded a lateral
view of certain grimy back-yards and bricks, but which, owing to subsequent erections,
commanded at present no view at all, though it gave some light. Within three feet of the
panes was a wall, and the light came down from far above, between two lofty buildings,
as from a very small opening in a dome. Still further to a satisfactory arrangement, I
procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight,
though not remove him from my voice. And thus, in a manner, privacy and society were
conjoined.
At first Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famishing for
something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself