with Spitzenbergs, to be had at the numerous stalls nigh 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 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