The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bartleby, The Scrivener, by Herman Melville

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Title: Bartleby, The Scrivener
A Story of Wall-Street

Author: Herman Melville

Release Date: February 23, 2004 [EBook #11231]
[Date last updated: April 29, 2005]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER ***

Produced by Steve J. Nelson and Clara T. Nelson

BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER.

A STORY OF WALL-STREET.

I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last
thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what
would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as
yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:--I mean the
law-copyists or scriveners. I have known very many of them,
professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate divers
histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental
souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other scriveners
for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener of the
strangest I ever saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists I might
write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done.
I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography
of this man. It is an irreparable loss to literature. Bartleby was one
of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the
original sources, and in his case those are very small. What my own
astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, _that_ is all I know of him, except,
indeed, one vague report which will appear in the sequel.

Ere introducing the scrivener, as he first appeared to me, it is fit I
make some mention of myself, my _employees_, my business, my chambers,
and general surroundings; because some such description is indispensable
to an adequate understanding of the chief character about to be
presented.

Imprimis: I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with
a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence,
though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even
to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of