came to my ear a few months after the scrivener's decease. Upon what
basis it rested, I could never ascertain; and hence, how true it is I
cannot now tell. But inasmuch as this vague report has not been without
certain strange suggestive interest to me, however sad, it may prove the
same with some others; and so I will briefly mention it. The report was
this: that Bartleby had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter
Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly removed by a
change in the administration. When I think over this rumor, I cannot
adequately express the emotions which seize me. Dead letters! does it
not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone
to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten
it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting
them for the flames? For by the cart-load they are annually burned.
Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring:--the
finger it was meant for, perhaps, moulders in the grave; a bank-note
sent in swiftest charity:--he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor
hungers any more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those
who died unhoping; good tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved
calamities. On errands of life, these letters speed to death.

Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!