little narrative has sufficiently interested him, to awaken curiosity as
to who Bartleby was, and what manner of life he led prior to the present
narrator's making his acquaintance, I can only reply, that in such
curiosity I fully share, but am wholly unable to gratify it. Yet here I
hardly know whether I should divulge one little item of rumor, which
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
a certain 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, hardly can I 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!