er the circumstances.

Ginger Nut, the third on my list, was a lad some twelve years old. His
father was a carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of
a cart, before he died. So he sent him to my office as student at law,
errand boy, and cleaner and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week.
He had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much. Upon
inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array of the shells of various
sorts of nuts. Indeed, to this quick-witted youth the whole noble
science of the law was contained in a nut-shell. Not the least among
the employments of Ginger Nut, as well as one which he discharged with
the most alacrity, was his duty as cake and apple purveyor for Turkey
and Nippers. Copying law papers being proverbially dry, husky sort of
business, my two scriveners were fain to moisten their mouths very often
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 op