Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street
    Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street
    Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street
    Ebook53 pages1 hour

    Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street

    By Herman Melville

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Bartleby is a kind of clerk, a copyist, "who obstinately refuses to go on doing the sort of writing demanded of him." During the spring of 1851, Melville felt similarly about his work on Moby Dick. Thus, Bartleby can be seen to represent Melville's frustration with his own situation as a writer, and the story itself is "about a writer who forsakes conventional modes because of an irresistible preoccupation with the most baffling philosophical questions." Bartleby can also be seen to represent Melville's relation to his commercial, democratic society.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateJul 2, 2013
    ISBN9781627550079
    Author

    Herman Melville

    Herman Melville was an American novelist, essayist, short story writer and poet. His most notable work, Moby Dick, is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

    Read more from Herman Melville

    Related to Bartleby, The Scrivener

    Related ebooks

    Noir For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Woman At Home

      Jan 29, 2019

      From the journals of Samuel P. Perceval,bookseller: Covent Garden, Dec. 15, 1974 This spring, I found a curious letter sewn into the hem of a coat belonging to my late great-aunt Florence. Crudely enveloped in what appeared to be a page torn from

      5 min read

    • Article

      Fredericksburg’s Wounded Warriors

      Jul 11, 2023

      Fredericksburg’s Wounded Warriors
      6 min read

    • Article

      John Ashbery

      Mar 15, 2019

      He could understand the things at home.—Wallace Stevens, “Things of August” Scribbled on the expansive mist, the desireof many dwindles to usand our “activities,” wholesomeor otherwise. Soon it becomes apparentthat neither they nor I have any prise o

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel

      Dec 9, 2017

      I tend to buy used books in bunches, which means the haul from some expeditions stays buried for weeks, months, years even. For this entry, I highlight three finds that, breaking custom, I bought and read almost immediately this year: Hugo Charteris’

      6 min read

    • Article

      Stop Hating on Adjectives!

      Jun 12, 2019

      A common admonition in creative writing pedagogy is, “Cut as many adjectives as possible.” I propose that this rule springs from mere prejudice. The post Stop Hating on Adjectives! appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Island

      Jun 4, 2018

      The Island
      8 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • Article

      Vaguely Clever

      Jun 29, 2022

      It was quite a coup for our little church in the Sussex village of Ticehurst. Edith Vogel, a renowned pianist, had generously come down from London to give a recital in aid of the restoration of the roof. She was well into a Beethoven sonata which wa

      3 min read

    • Article

      If I Had a Sense of Beauty

      Dec 5, 2017

      If I Had a Sense of Beauty
      14 min read

    • Article

      Luxe, Calme Et Volupté

      Oct 12, 2018

      Luxe, Calme Et Volupté
      7 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems by Geoffrey Hill

      Dec 15, 2018

      62. Why such irony in re the mystical context when a graph of even the most commonplace exchange would appear perplexed; when we drop out from the plainest statement in the posture of a bat? So, decide to make something of that, the style to resemble

      2 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2022

      After centuries of deferralto the white sky cloud cover God, who kept me on orange alert,babbling for mercies that were batted away sloppilylike dustballs in the wake of a sock, I turned to the Divine Creatrix,who built the short night, I was convinc

      2 min read

    • Article

      Past In To Present

      Aug 3, 2023

      Past In To Present
      6 min read

    • Article

      My Day with Andy Warhol

      Jun 1, 2018

      My Day with Andy Warhol
      10 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Iľja Rákoš

      Dec 12, 2021

      As long as there are authors, translators, publishers large or small committed to the deliberate word deliberately committed to the page, and so many who still need those words on pages, legal or illegal, right, left, or center, we’ll find our feet a

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Bartleby, The Scrivener

    4/5

    833 ratings27 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Weird story & not believable.
    • 4/5
      This one is a very intiguing book. Melville could have made a full length book with this one. It was too short and I would have love to know more about Bartleby.
    • 4/5
      Reminds me a lot of Beckett... I would also recommend an essay on the semiology in Bartleby by Gilles Deleuze, even though there's lot of psychoanalytical thoughts involved, it opened the book to me in a new way: Bartleby doesn't simply say no (or yes) and why he thinks it's obvious he has to stop copying (or doing anything) as well, because it's his only way of surviving.
    • 4/5
      I tried to write a review, but I'd prefer not to.
    • 5/5
      Well, this is an interesting piece. So much has been said about it and I have nothing further to offer. Worth reading by all those who like deep thought and contemplation.

      A wonderful piece of Humanity!

    • 3/5
      A dark tale about a man who lives in a corner of an office and the story that ensues, definitely one of those stories that portray eccentrics and is therefore what I would regard as a parasitic story where the sad, lonely etc become fodder for the more prosperous novelist. That does not mean we should have a free for all in real life or novelistic life.
    • 2/5
      Obviously quite well written, but it didn't make me feel much of anything except sorry for Bartleby and especially the narrator. It was just sad.
    • 5/5
      Reason for Reading: I've decided to try Melville House's Novella book club for 6 months and plan to read the two selections, the month following their arrival. Hence this is my second January read.I was not actually looking forward to this. I once tried to read "Moby Dick" and failed miserably. I cannot recall if I've run across Melville in anthologies but if I have obviously it is not something that I've remembered. Melville's writing style is a touch difficult for me and I found this a bit difficult to get into with the first several pages long-winded. However, this changed quite rapidly and I became quite smitten with this story and must say it was not Bartleby I was most intrigued with but the narrator. Bartleby is a most curious fellow, one who starts work in his position as a copyist, but gentlemanly refuses to do any other work by politely saying "I prefer not to." to any such requests. Only speaking when spoken to, this solitary man seems to always be present at work and when not working diligently is seen standing staring into space or out the window at a view of a brick wall. His condition deteriorates until he eventually "prefers not to" work at all, leave the premises, or be let go from his position. He becomes a peculiar, perhaps mentally unbalanced, perhaps supernaturally guided (what does he live upon?) character.However, I found my interest laying mostly with the character of the narrator, a lawyer, the Master in Chancery for the state of New York. At first impressed with his new employee's fast and diligent output of quality work, he starts to notice the man's peculiarities. When Bartleby virtually refuses to engage in any other work than copying the lawyer is flummoxed, leaving him be and making up reasons for the man's behaviour. This is in character with the lawyer though as he has done the same with his two other employees, one who is disagreeable in the mornings, the other in the afternoons. The lawyer has learned to work around this and sympathize with the men by inventing character flaws and health reasons for their behaviour. Bartleby, however, becomes unfathomable and yet the lawyer continues to show him kindness and think the best of him. Things become intense though once the lawyer finds Bartleby in dishabille in his chambers early one morning, doors locked from the inside and the lawyer finds that he is allowing himself to walk around the block several times upon Bartleby's orders. From this point on Bartelby becomes the one with the power and the lawyer eventually must leave his own chambers and move elsewhere to be rid of the man; this then starts a downward spiral of events for Bartleby which he can no longer control nor the lawyer's aid be accepted.I found this story entirely intriguing and a curious look into the human condition. I honestly don't know what to make of it; what is the point or moral being made here. Even though I don't share this viewpoint, I do feel that many readers may find themselves siding with Bartelby and perhaps finding this a story of the downward drudgery of the clerical worker's monotonous plight. But I felt Bartelby went into this position with a chip on his shoulder and I see it more of a psychological tale of how the lawyer tries to help someone who obviously is in need of help both socially and mentally and yet there is only so much one can do to help another when they are unwilling to help themselves. Thought-provoking.
    • 3/5
      Given my obsession with Melville House Books, it was inevitable that I would eventually get around to ordering this little novella, as it appears to be a mascot or talisman of sorts for them. So, indeed, it was a part of my last order.

      I have to say, I would have enjoyed it more with less hype. (But would I have bought it if not for the hype? Probably not.) I kept wanting it to knock me over with its greatness, but that would be entirely antithetical to everything about this book. Rather, this book has grown on me slowly, and I find I think only more fondly of it now that it has long been closed on my shelf. I will definitely have to read this again after more time has passed.

      But what is this novella? It is a story related by a powerful lawyer, telling the story of Bartleby, who he hires as a copyist. Bartleby seems to be everything he would want in an employee, quiet, efficient, until one day he responds to a request with a gentle, but firm, "I would prefer not to." Bartleby's motivations and life story are almost entirely speculation on the part of the nameless narrator, who is thoroughly incapable of understanding his softly recalcitrant employee.

      Recommended if you read expecting quietly wonderful.
    • 5/5
      This short story by Herman Melville, arguably one of the greatest authors the United States has ever produced, follows the downward trajectory of Bartleby, a strange and pale young clerk in a nineteenth-century New York law firm. Narrated by Bartleby's erstwhile employer, it records his gradual withdrawal into himself, to the point of self-destruction. Simultaneously hilarious and tragic, it has that uniquely surreal quality which is the hallmark of Melville's great works.It is in relation to these other works that this story can best be understood, and some of Melville's great themes be appreciated. As another reviewer remarked, the story takes a very critical view of capitalism, and its effect on the soul of the wage worker. Bartleby's slide into the "blankness of extinction" (the title of a paper I wrote on this story), is precipitated in no small part by the spirit-quenching nature of his work. That Melville's critique was intentional, can be demonstrated by his similar treatment of another group of wage workers in his short story, The Tartarus of Maids. But I think it would be a mistake to think that Melville's criticism is aimed at capitalism, in and of itself. I had a professor who always argued that one of Melville's most pervasive themes was the destructive nature of the father-son bond - the ways in which fathers destroy their sons. This is strongly evident in another of Melville's shorter works, Billy Budd, which has many parallels to Bartleby. In this sense, I believe that although Melville is critical of capitalism, he sees the employer-employee relationship as a stand-in for pre-existing destructive patterns.Finally, Bartleby can also be understood as an oppositional companion-piece to that continuously avant-garde masterpiece, The Confidence-Man, in which Melville seeks to work out his feelings about the limitations of communication itself. To speak is to deceive in this novel, and the author contends that everyone is both a con-man and dupe, all at once. To seek to escape from this cycle of deception, made inevitable by the very nature of speech, is to reject one's humanity, and to self-abnegate. More to the point, it can't be done. In this schema, Bartleby's absolutist stance in refusing to "play the game" must lead to self-destruction.I love this story. I can think of no other work that has so moved me to laughter, even while I cried. It is a very potent distillation of Melville's genius, bitter but brilliant. Thank goodness it's a short story! I was very happy to find this edition, which presents the story by itself, in a very handsome cloth edition. It also includes black & white photographs from the lower Manhattan of Melville's day.Let me close my review of this brilliant work with a short personal vignette. Some years ago, while going to college and working in a bookstore, I mentioned to one of my co-workers that I was going to be taking a class on Herman Melville. He was a plumber by trade, but was holding down this job so his disabled son could have regular health insurance. When I told him about my class, he asked if we would be reading the story Bartleby the Scrivener, to which I responded that I believed we would be. "Well," he said with a twinkle in his eye, "I could tell you all about that story, but I'd prefer not to," and he would say nothing more on the topic. A very well-read man, he liked to take some of the English graduate students we had working there down a peg or two, and knowing him was a welcome reminder that formal education and true intelligence are not synonymous. So, Steve, wherever you are, here's to you!
    • 4/5
      Wow. I thought I must have read this in my youth, but now I'm sure I would have remembered Bartleby had I encountered him before! Bartleby, employed as a lawyer's clerk, takes his passive resistance to exerting any effort to the ultimate extreme. If Bartleby were merely disinclined to work, his employer, literature's most accommodating employer, and we, the story's readers, would know what to make of him. Bartleby, however, is not inclined to humor us in that or in any regard. To our requests that he explain or justify his behavior, accept our sympathy, or act according to convention, reason, or self-preservation, Bartleby will respond, with quiet determination, "I would prefer not to." Somehow, in his refusal to be controlled, pressured, or in any way manipulated, I found him perversely inspiring.
    • 4/5
      thought i wouldn't like it. read it because it was short. liked it. strange story.
    • 4/5
      Delightfully high concept.
    • 4/5
      Read this in a Lit class, loved it... still struggling with Moby Dick,of course, I'll finish it one of these days.
    • 3/5
      This is such an odd story. I'm not really sure what to think of it, and the ending is anticlimactic, it was *interesting* and that's why I gave it an ok rating, but it's mostly perplexing.
    • 5/5
      This story was so much fun! I feel like there are a hundred valid readings of this economical little tale... I never thought I would feel sympathy for a "boss" character, until the narrator of this story. But Bartleby too, seems a kind of hero, as frustrating as he is -- a classic American slacker. Despite the occasionally satirical overtones, ultimately a very subtle rendering of the relations between working people, between men, between humans. Oh Bartleby, oh humanity!(I see below that there is a Deleuze article on this story, which I am now eager to read.)
    • 5/5
      Interested in Melville? Hmmmm. Interested in investing 100 million hours into _Moby Dick_? Surely you've considered the story about whales and ship ringings -- if only momentarily. Well to be inspired by Bartleby himself you might say, "I would prefer not. But I am not particular." Trust me, you want your Mellville in novella format. And you won't regret it. (4.5 stars)
    • 4/5
      Entertaining and funny little story about a mysterious young clerk. It reminds me of Kafka's Metamorphosis in that an alien element is suddenly introduced in a closed completely ordered world, causing problems and distress.
    • 4/5
      This (very short) book (really a short story) is so funny, until it's suddenly sad. It is about a man who begins to work for the narrator in a law office. He works well until he "prefers not to." And he uses this sentence over and over again until it becomes a real problem for his employer (the narrator). I had only read Moby Dick by Herman Melville, so I was glad to read this and find that I enjoyed his writing so much! He has a wonderful sense of humor, but also a good sense for humanity, and kind of pull your heartstrings from both sides! I was surprised and pleased, and plan to read more Melville in the future!
    • 4/5
      It's shocking, but I don't remember reading any other Herman Melville (no, not even Moby Dick - although it is on my shelf waiting to be read). I've heard while Moby Dick was a worthy read, during his life Melville's other works weren't well received. That's unfortunate, because I did enjoy Bartleby. It's a short story, but it reminded me a bit of [The Hunger Artist] by Kafka.
    • 4/5
      Bartleby The Scrivener are a ridiculously significant modern tale from late 19th century which question morality and humanity that goes beyond the world of productivity and capitalism. As much as Melville drawing the humanism inspiration from Hawthorne in science, he did it by human ethics. In a simpler way of generalizing this book, this is one weird crazy book. They call this book an absurdist and existentialist fiction but I find its a lot harder to round up the author easily. I genuinely prefer the discussion on this book than the book itself because the book is confusing while reading but became more clear when you've find that its filled with metaphors on some kind.

      The story is narrated by a lawyer who told a story of the most peculiar person he ever met; Bartleby. He had problems regarding his scriveners, Nipper and Turkey who have their own temperament which leads to the hiring of Bartleby. At first, he was a good and wonderful employee until one day when asked by the narrator to proofread a document, Bartleby would say "I would prefer not to". The narrator let it slide until Bartleby grew increasingly unproductive and eccentric with his repetitive that he would prefer not to do everything asked by everyone even for his own well-being that it alarmed the narrator that he tried to persuade Bartleby to give a reason why but Bartleby would say continuously, "I would prefer not to".

      A scrivener is a copyist. You could say it is a modern equivalent of a xerox machine. While in this story, Bartleby became the main focus due to his persistence and curious way of conduct that frightened everyone around him. He contrasted the world the narrator lived in. His depression became so infectious that the narrator who sympathize but fear him enough that he relocated his business after failing to nudge Bartleby to any form of work or life that Bartleby caused the tenants and new occupants trouble which lands him to even worst condition.

      Some would consider Bartleby as a language and by his action, he became a verbal succubus sucking emotions around him just by his verbal persistence. He can also be seen as a victim of the modernity and this degradation began from his previous employment which the narrator sadly mourn the lost of humanity in him. The novel even question about the right of the living if only the living could choose to not proliferate under productivity. It also shows how being different can be misinterpreted if not being understood and in search of knowing, the narrator found himself unwittingly empathized with Bartleby who continued to eluded him by being passive until the narrator became helpless as it destroyed Bartleby from the inside. Maybe Bartleby aren't meant to be understood nor to be saved but the situation around him are relevant in this time to ignore the underlying clues embedded inside the novella. Even still, it alludes me.
    • 4/5
      Great story, but this edition is more of a magazine than a book.
    • 5/5
      The Unexplained Intrusion, as in Kafka, or more particularly Godot, Turkey and Nippers two halves of the same personality (one calm in the morning, the other in the afternoon, thus forming between them a single functional person), the young boy who occasionally appears, and Bartleby the anti-Godot who never leaves ("but surely tomorrow" says the narrator). Yes, Melville wasn't the first (Schubert wrote his B-flat sonata in 1828: that trill is Bartleby) and the parallels are all accidents; except there aren't really any accidents, we're all in the same universe, some of us just see things before others. The Unexplained Intrusion is always life itself, of course. It is also (which seldom goes noticed in Melville) very funny.
    • 4/5
      Starts out funny, but ends up quite moving and deep. There's something compelling about Bartleby, his extreme composure, his unflinching yet mild refusal. There's something unnervingly inhuman about him, precisely because behind that veneer you know there is something essentially human, vulnerable, and very much like ourselves. But we are not privy to the inner life that lies behind the blank expression, and Melville wisely does not let us in on it. It's hard not to feel sorry for both the narrator and for Bartleby as well, and the whole time I was reading it I was seeing myself assuming either role very easily, by a turn of fate or flip of coin.
    • 4/5
      In deciding simply not to perform tasks he doesn’t want to do anymore at work, to the point of scorn and later absurdity, it seems to me that Bartleby (1853) is one of the first existential heroes in literature, and Melville was well ahead of his time. Spoiler alert... After eventually being let go in the most humane way possible, Bartleby doesn’t leave the office, and when he’s put into prison, he sits on his own, refusing food, sitting quietly and doing nothing. One wonders throughout the short novel, what has led Bartleby to this state? On the last page it’s revealed that he had worked in the Dead Letters Office in Washington. Seeing all of those correspondences burned, which had possibly meant so much when they were penned, seems not only dehumanizing and severely depressing, but such an outright expression of man’s transience and the ultimate meaninglessness of our lives that it leads to Bartleby’s debilitating angst. “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!” indeed. Just this quote, on pity: “My first emotions had been those of pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopefulness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul be rid of it.”
    • 4/5
      A scrivener, Bartleby, is trapped in the soul-killing monotony of his job, a job that leads a co-worker to get soused every day at lunch. After a while, Bartleby starts refusing his assigned work, but in turning away from his tasks he doesn’t turn to doing anything else. His rebellion is passive – staring at the brick walls that enclose him and the others on Wall Street, he becomes a standing rebuke of superficial ‘busy-ness’, a rebuke from which his employer eventually flees.I appreciated this story more after reading Mordecai Marcus’ interpretation of it (‘Melville’s Bartleby as a Psychological Double’, College English 23 [1962]: 365-8). Marcus sees Bartleby as his employer’s ‘double’. That is, this recalcitrant worker is a part of the lawyer’s own psyche, one that suffers neglect in the urban office. Something essential to its sustenance is missing. Obdurate in the face of all monetary enticements, this increasingly spectral other can't fit its assigned place in the urban business hub. It belongs to nature, the lawyer’s own nature, and is marooned in 'unnature' (Wall Street). Naturally, it withers in this world of material plenty.The story reminds me of Theodore Roethke's poem 'Dolor', with its lines about 'the inexorable sadness of pencils' and 'desolation in immaculate public places'.
    • 5/5

      There’s absolutely nothing under the sun that compels me to review Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener except the sheer brilliance of both (the star, that is, as well as the novella). The ghost of one of America’s greatest writers may be grateful for the attention—especially since Melville lived the last decades of his life in near obscurity—but I don’t believe in ghosts except as they appear in certain plays.

      I picked this novella out of the stacks one afternoon at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library while awaiting my turn at one of the computers. Ten minutes later, I’d forgotten all about computers and my desire to use one of them. Yes, it was that good!

      It’s been years since I last read any of Melville’s work. And the truth is that even now, at the age of sixty-two, I have yet to read Moby Dick. Why this novella isn’t at the top of the list of required reading for high school sophomores is a mystery to me. The language is simple, the plot compelling. And who doesn’t love a mystery—especially when it’s as well written as this one?

      I can only encourage you to run right out to your local library and pick it up. If you’re lucky enough to find a copy of the novella on its lonesome, it won’t cost you much more than a buck—which, if you live in the great State of New York, is about 1/13 the price of a pack of cigarettes. Today. (The price of cigarettes will certainly have increased by this time next month to something approaching obscenity.)

      But back to Melville. The man is a marvel. And although I’m no real fan of his poetry (in which he more than dabbled the last thirty years of his life), his prose turns cartwheels.

      Bartleby the Scrivener,apart from being downright funny in parts, ends on a note that would rival Poe’s imaginative machinations. No teasers here, but trust me: if you ever again come across the expression “dead letter” (no, not dead French letter!), don’t be surprised if your mind and memory turn immediately to Melville and Bartleby the Scrivener.

      N. B.: I gave this novella five stars only because I can’t give it a perfect ten.

      RRB
      1/21/13
      Brooklyn, NY

    Book preview

    Bartleby, The Scrivener - Herman Melville

    Bartleby, The Scrivener

    A Story of Wall-Street

    by Herman Melville

    ©2013 SMK Books

    This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race have changed before allowing them to read this classic work.

    All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

    SMK Books

    PO Box 3005

    Radford VA 24143-3005

    ISBN 13: 978-1627550079

    I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener of the strangest I ever saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to literature. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report which will appear in the sequel.

    Ere introducing the scrivener, as he first appeared to me, it is fit I make some mention of myself, my employees, my business, my chambers, and general surroundings; because some such description is indispensable to an adequate understanding of the chief character about to be presented.

    Imprimis: I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquility of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men’s bonds and mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor’s good opinion.

    Some time prior to the period at which this little history begins, my avocations had been largely increased. The good old office, now extinct in the State of New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred upon me. It was not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly 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

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1