"Go to the next room, and tell Nippers to come to me."

"I prefer not to," he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly
disappeared.

"Very good, Bartleby," said I, in a quiet sort of serenely-severe
self-possessed tone, intimating the unalterable purpose of some terrible
retribution very close at hand. At the moment I half intended something
of the kind. But upon the whole, as it was drawing towards my
dinner-hour, I thought it best to put on my hat and walk home for the
day, suffering much from perplexity and distress of mind.

Shall I acknowledge it? The conclusion of this whole business was, that
it soon became a fixed fact of my chambers, that a pale young scrivener,
by the name of Bartleby, had a desk there; that he copied for me at the
usual rate of four cents a folio (one hundred words); but he was
permanently exempt from examining the work done by him, that duty being
transferred to Turkey and Nippers, out of compliment, doubtless, to
their superior acuteness; moreover, said Bartleby was never, on any
account, to be dispatched on the most trivial errand of any sort; and
that even if entreated to take upon him such a matter, it was generally
understood that he would "prefer not to"--in other words, that he would
refuse point-blank.

As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled to Bartleby. His
steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry
(except when he chose to throw himself into a standing revery behind his
screen), his great stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under all
circumstances, made him a valuable acquisition. One prime thing was