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- remunerative. I seldom lose my temper; much more seldom indulge in
dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages; but I must be permitted
to be rash here and declare, that I consider the sudden and violent
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 sky-light 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
6 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 easy to be matched—for these reasons,
I was willing to overlook his eccentricities, though indeed,
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