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- abrogation of the office of Master in Chancery, by the new
Constitution, as a —— premature act; inasmuch as I had counted upon a
life-lease of the profits, whereas I only received those of a few short
years. But this is by the way.
My chambers were up stairs, at No. —— Wall street. At one end, they
looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious skylight
shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom.
This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise,
deficient in what landscape painters call “life.” But, if so, the view
from the other end of my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if
nothing more. In that direction, my windows commanded an unobstructed
view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which
wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but, for
the benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten
feet of my window panes. Owing to the great height of the surrounding
buildings, and my chambers being on the second floor, the interval
between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square
cistern.
At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I had two persons
as copyists in my employment, and a promising lad as an office-boy.
First, Turkey; second, Nippers; third, Ginger Nut. These may seem
names, the like of which are not usually found in the Directory. In
truth, they were nicknames, mutually conferred upon each other by my
three clerks, and were deemed expressive of their respective persons or
characters. Turkey was a short, pursy Englishman, of about my own
age—that is, somewhere not far from sixty. In the morning, one might
say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o’clock,
meridian—his dinner hour—it blazed like a grate full of Christmas
coals; and continued blazing—but, as it were, with a gradual wane—till
six o’clock, P.M., or thereabouts; after which, I saw no more of the
proprietor of the face, which, gaining its meridian with the sun,
seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following
day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory. There are many
singular coincidences I have known in the course of my life, not the
least among which was the fact, that, exactly when Turkey displayed his
fullest beams from his red and radiant countenance, just then, too, at
that critical moment, began the daily period when I considered his
business capacities as seriously disturbed for the remainder of the
twenty-four hours. Not that he was absolutely idle, or averse to
business, then; far from it. The difficulty was, he was apt to be
altogether too energetic. There was a strange, inflamed, flurried,
flighty recklessness of activity about him. He would be incautious in
dipping his pen into his inkstand. All his blots upon my documents were
dropped there after twelve o’clock, meridian. Indeed, not only would he
be reckless, and sadly given to making blots in the afternoon, but,
some days, he went further, and was rather noisy. At such times, too,
his face flamed with augmented blazonry, as if cannel coal had been
heaped on anthracite. He made an unpleasant racket with his chair;
spilled his sand-box; in mending his pens, impatiently split them all
to pieces, and threw them on the floor in a sudden passion; stood up,
and leaned over his table, boxing his papers about in a most indecorous
manner, very sad to behold in an elderly man like him. Nevertheless, as
he was in many ways a most valuable person to me, and all the time
before twelve o’clock, meridian, was the quickest, steadiest creature,
too, accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easily to be
matched—for these reasons, I was willing to overlook his
eccentricities, though, indeed, occasionally, I remonstrated with him.
I did this very gently, however, because, though the civilest, nay, the
blandest and most reverential of men in the morning, yet, in the
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