The Piazza Tales | Page 8

cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug
business among rich men's bonds, and mortgages, and title-deeds. All
who know me, consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob
Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation
in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I
do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not
unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name
which, I admit, I love to repeat; for it hath a rounded and orbicular
sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not
insensible to the late John Jacob Astor's good opinion.
Some time prior to the period at which this little history begins, my
avocations had been largely increased. The good old office, now extinct
in the State of New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred
upon me. It was not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly
remunerative. I seldom lose my temper; much more seldom indulge in
dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages; but, I must be permitted
to be rash here, and declare, that I consider the sudden and violent
abrogation of the office of Master in Chancery, by the new Constitution,
as a ---- premature act; inasmuch as I had counted upon a life-lease of

the profits, whereas I only received those of a few short years. But this
is by the way.
My chambers were up stairs, at No. ---- Wall street. At one end, they
looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious skylight shaft,
penetrating the building from top to bottom.
This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise,
deficient in what landscape painters call "life." But, if so, the view from
the other end of my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing
more. In that direction, my windows commanded an unobstructed view
of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall
required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but, for the
benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet
of my window panes. Owing to the great height of the surrounding
buildings, and my chambers being on the second floor, the interval
between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square cistern.
At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I had two persons
as copyists in my employment, and a promising lad as an office-boy.
First, Turkey; second, Nippers; third, Ginger Nut. These may seem
names, the like of which are not usually found in the Directory. In truth,
they were nicknames, mutually conferred upon each other by my three
clerks, and were deemed expressive of their respective persons or
characters. Turkey was a short, pursy Englishman, of about my own
age--that is, somewhere not far from sixty. In the morning, one might
say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o'clock,
meridian--his dinner hour--it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals;
and continued blazing--but, as it were, with a gradual wane--till six
o'clock, P.M., or thereabouts; after which, I saw no more of the
proprietor of the face, which, gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed
to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with the
like regularity and undiminished glory. There are many singular
coincidences I have known in the course of my life, not the least among
which was the fact, that, exactly when Turkey displayed his fullest
beams from his red and radiant countenance, just then, too, at that
critical moment, began the daily period when I considered his business
capacities as seriously disturbed for the remainder of the twenty-four
hours. Not that he was absolutely idle, or averse to business, then; far
from it. The difficulty was, he was apt to be altogether too energetic.

There was a strange, inflamed, flurried, flighty recklessness of activity
about him. He would be incautious in dipping his pen into his inkstand.
All his blots upon my documents were dropped there after twelve
o'clock, meridian. Indeed, not only would he be reckless, and sadly
given to making blots in the afternoon, but, some days, he went further,
and was rather noisy. At such times, too, his face flamed with
augmented blazonry, as if cannel coal had been heaped on anthracite.
He made an unpleasant racket with his chair; spilled his sand-box; in
mending his pens, impatiently split them all to pieces, and threw them
on the floor in a sudden passion; stood up, and leaned over his table,
boxing his papers about in a most indecorous manner, very sad to
behold in an elderly man like him. Nevertheless,