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- 2026-01-30T07:57:34.136Z
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- On the appointed day I engaged carts and men, proceeded to my chambers,
and having but little furniture, every thing was removed in a few
hours. Throughout, the scrivener remained standing behind the screen,
which I directed to be removed the last thing. It was withdrawn; and
being folded up like a huge folio, left him the motionless occupant of
a naked room. I stood in the entry watching him a moment, while
something from within me upbraided me.
I re-entered, with my hand in my pocket—and—and my heart in my mouth.
“Good-bye, Bartleby; I am going—good-bye, and God some way bless you;
and take that,” slipping something in his hand. But it dropped upon the
floor, and then,—strange to say—I tore myself from him whom I had so
longed to be rid of.
Established in my new quarters, for a day or two I kept the door
locked, and started at every footfall in the passages. When I returned
to my rooms after any little absence, I would pause at the threshold
for an instant, and attentively listen, ere applying my key. But these
fears were needless. Bartleby never came nigh me.
I thought all was going well, when a perturbed looking stranger visited
me, inquiring whether I was the person who had recently occupied rooms
at No.—Wall-street.
Full of forebodings, I replied that I was.
“Then sir,” said the stranger, who proved a lawyer, “you are
responsible for the man you left there. He refuses to do any copying;
he refuses to do any thing; he says he prefers not to; and he refuses
to quit the premises.”
“I am very sorry, sir,” said I, with assumed tranquility, but an inward
tremor, “but, really, the man you allude to is nothing to me—he is no
relation or apprentice of mine, that you should hold me responsible for
him.”
“In mercy’s name, who is he?”
“I certainly cannot inform you. I know nothing about him. Formerly I
employed him as a copyist; but he has done nothing for me now for some
time past.”
“I shall settle him then,—good morning, sir.”
Several days passed, and I heard nothing more; and though I often felt
a charitable prompting to call at the place and see poor Bartleby, yet
a certain squeamishness of I know not what withheld me.
All is over with him, by this time, thought I at last, when through
another week no further intelligence reached me. But coming to my room
the day after, I found several persons waiting at my door in a high
state of nervous excitement.
“That’s the man—here he comes,” cried the foremost one, whom I
recognized as the lawyer who had previously called upon me alone.
“You must take him away, sir, at once,” cried a portly person among
them, advancing upon me, and whom I knew to be the landlord of
No.—Wall-street. “These gentlemen, my tenants, cannot stand it any
longer; Mr. B—” pointing to the lawyer, “has turned him out of his
room, and he now persists in haunting the building generally, sitting
upon the banisters of the stairs by day, and sleeping in the entry by
night. Every body is concerned; clients are leaving the offices; some
fears are entertained of a mob; something you must do, and that without
delay.”
Aghast at this torrent, I fell back before it, and would fain have
locked myself in my new quarters. In vain I persisted that Bartleby was
nothing to me—no more than to any one else. In vain:—I was the last
person known to have any thing to do with him, and they held me to the
terrible account. Fearful then of being exposed in the papers (as one
person present obscurely threatened) I considered the matter, and at
length said, that if the lawyer would give me a confidential interview
with the scrivener, in his (the lawyer’s) own room, I would that
afternoon strive my best to rid them of the nuisance they complained
of.
Going up stairs to my old haunt, there was Bartleby silently sitting
upon the banister at the landing.
“What are you doing here, Bartleby?” said I.
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- Chunk 1