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- 1196
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.409Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1105
- text
- Nippers, exclaimed:
“Bartleby a second time says, he won’t examine his papers. What do you
think of it, Turkey?”
It was afternoon, be it remembered. Turkey sat glowing like a brass
boiler; his bald head steaming; his hands reeling among his blotted
papers.
“Think of it?” roared Turkey; “I think I’ll just step behind his
screen, and black his eyes for him!”
So saying, Turkey rose to his feet and threw his arms into a pugilistic
position. He was hurrying away to make good his promise, when I
detained him, alarmed at the effect of incautiously rousing Turkey’s
combativeness after dinner.
“Sit down, Turkey,” said I, “and hear what Nippers has to say. What do
you think of it, Nippers? Would I not be justified in immediately
dismissing Bartleby?”
“Excuse me, that is for you to decide, sir. I think his conduct quite
unusual, and, indeed, unjust, as regards Turkey and myself. But it may
only be a passing whim.”
“Ah,” exclaimed I, “you have strangely changed your mind, then—you
speak very gently of him now.”
“All beer,” cried Turkey; “gentleness is effects of beer—Nippers and I
dined together to-day. You see how gentle _I_ am, sir. Shall I go and
black his eyes?”
“You refer to Bartleby, I suppose. No, not to-day, Turkey,” I replied;
“pray, put up your fists.”
I closed the doors, and again advanced towards Bartleby. I felt
additional incentives tempting me to my fate. I burned to be rebelled
against again. I remembered that Bartleby never left the office.
“Bartleby,” said I, “Ginger Nut is away; just step around to the Post
Office, won’t you? (it was but a three minutes’ walk), and see if there
is anything for me.”
“I would prefer not to.”
“You _will_ not?”
“I _prefer_ not.”
I staggered to my desk, and sat there in a deep study. My blind
inveteracy returned. Was there any other thing in which I could procure
myself to be ignominiously repulsed by this lean, penniless wight?—my
hired clerk? What added thing is there, perfectly reasonable, that he
will be sure to refuse to do?
“Bartleby!”
No answer.
“Bartleby,” in a louder tone.
No answer.
“Bartleby,” I roared.
Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the
third summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage.
“Go to the next room, and tell Nippers to come to me.”
“I prefer not to,” he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly
disappeared.
“Very good, Bartleby,” said I, in a quiet sort of serenely-severe
self-possessed tone, intimating the unalterable purpose of some
terrible retribution very close at hand. At the moment I half intended
something of the kind. But upon the whole, as it was drawing towards my
dinner-hour, I thought it best to put on my hat and walk home for the
day, suffering much from perplexity and distress of mind.
Shall I acknowledge it? The conclusion of this whole business was, that
it soon became a fixed fact of my chambers, that a pale young
scrivener, by the name of Bartleby, had a desk there; that he copied
for me at the usual rate of four cents a folio (one hundred words); but
he was permanently exempt from examining the work done by him, that
duty being transferred to Turkey and Nippers, out of compliment,
doubtless, to their superior acuteness; moreover, said Bartleby was
never, on any account, to be dispatched on the most trivial errand of
any sort; and that even if entreated to take upon him such a matter, it
was generally understood that he would “prefer not to”—in other words,
that he would refuse point-blank.
- title
- Chunk 10