wafers--indeed they sell them at the rate of six or eight for a
penny--the scrape of his pen blending with the crunching of the crisp
particles in his mouth. Of all the fiery afternoon blunders and
flurried rashnesses of Turkey, was his once moistening a ginger-cake
between his lips, and clapping it on to a mortgage for a seal. I came
within an ace of dismissing him then. But he mollified me by making an
oriental bow, and saying--"With submission, sir, it was generous of me
to find you in stationery on my own account."

Now my original business--that of a conveyancer and title hunter, and
drawer-up of recondite documents of all sorts--was considerably
increased by receiving the master's office. There was now great work
for scriveners. Not only must I push the clerks already with me, but I
must have additional help. In answer to my advertisement, a motionless
young man one morning, stood upon my office threshold, the door being
open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now--pallidly neat,
pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby.

After a few words touching his qualifications, I engaged him, glad to
have among my corps of copyists a man of so singularly sedate an aspect,
which I thought might operate beneficially upon the flighty temper of
Turkey, and the fiery one of Nippers.

I should have stated before that ground glass folding-doors divided my
premises into two parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners, the
other by myself. According to my humor I threw open these doors, or
closed them. I resolved to assign Bartleby a corner by the
folding-doors, but on my side of them, so as to have this quiet man
within easy call, in case any trifling thing was to be done. I placed
his desk close up to a small side-window in that part of the room, a