He lives, then, on ginger-nuts, thought I; never eats a dinner, properly
speaking; he must be a vegetarian then; but no; he never eats even
vegetables, he eats nothing but ginger-nuts. My mind then ran on in
reveries concerning the probable effects upon the human constitution of
living entirely on ginger-nuts. Ginger-nuts are so called because they
contain ginger as one of their peculiar constituents, and the final
flavoring one. Now what was ginger? A hot, spicy thing. Was Bartleby
hot and spicy? Not at all. Ginger, then, had no effect upon Bartleby.
Probably he preferred it should have none.

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the
individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting
one perfectly harmless in his passivity; then, in the better moods of
the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination
what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the
most part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he
means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence; his aspect
sufficiently evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary. He is
useful to me. I can get along with him. If I turn him away, the
chances 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 in an excited manner--

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

It was aftern