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The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville
page 37 of 287 (12%)
are he will fall in with some less-indulgent employer, and then he will
be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve. Yes.
Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend
Bartleby; to humor him in his strange willfulness, will cost me little
or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet
morsel for my conscience. But this mood was not invariable, with me. The
passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me. I felt strangely goaded
on to encounter him in new opposition--to elicit some angry spark from
him answerable to my own. But, indeed, I might as well have essayed to
strike fire with my knuckles against a bit of Windsor soap. But one
afternoon the evil impulse in me mastered me, and the following little
scene ensued:

"Bartleby," said I, "when those papers are all copied, I will compare
them with you."

"I would prefer not to."

"How? Surely you do not mean to persist in that mulish vagary?"

No answer.

I threw open the folding-doors near by, and, turning upon Turkey and
Nippers, exclaimed:

"Bartleby a second time says, he won't examine his papers. What do you
think of it, Turkey?"

It was afternoon, be it remembered. Turkey sat glowing like a brass
boiler; his bald head steaming; his hands reeling among his blotted
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