Bartleby, The Scrivener | Page 3

events, I saw that go he
would not. So I made up my mind to let him stay, resolving, nevertheless, to see to it, that
during the afternoon he had to do with my less important papers.
Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole, rather
piratical-looking young man of about five and twenty. I always deemed him the victim of
two evil powers--ambition and indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain
impatience of the duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly

professional affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal documents. The indigestion
seemed betokened in an occasional nervous testiness and grinning irritability, causing the
teeth to audibly grind together over mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary
maledictions, hissed, rather than spoken, in the heat of business; and especially by a
continual discontent with the height of the table where he worked. Though of a very
ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers could never get this table to suit him. He put chips
under it, blocks of various sorts, bits of pasteboard, and at last went so far as to attempt
an exquisite adjustment by final pieces of folded blotting paper. But no invention would
answer. If, for the sake of easing his back, he brought the table lid at a sharp angle well
up towards his chin, and wrote there like a man using the steep roof of a Dutch house for
his desk:--then he declared that it stopped the circulation in his arms. If now he lowered
the table to his waistbands, and stooped over it in writing, then there was a sore aching in
his back. In short, the truth of the matter was, Nippers knew not what he wanted. Or, if he
wanted any thing, it was to be rid of a scrivener's table altogether. Among the
manifestations of his diseased ambition was a fondness he had for receiving visits from
certain ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats, whom he called his clients. Indeed I
was aware that not only was he, at times, considerable of a ward-politician, but he
occasionally did a little business at the Justices' courts, and was not unknown on the steps
of the Tombs. I have good reason to believe, however, that one individual who called
upon him at my chambers, and who, with a grand air, he insisted was his client, was no
other than a dun, and the alleged title-deed, a bill. But with all his failings, and the
annoyances he caused me, Nippers, like his compatriot Turkey, was a very useful man to
me; wrote a neat, swift hand; and, when he chose, was not deficient in a gentlemanly sort
of deportment. Added to this, he always dressed in a gentlemanly sort of way; and so,
incidentally, reflected credit upon my chambers. Whereas with respect to Turkey, I had
much ado to keep him from being a reproach to me. His clothes were apt to look oily and
smell of eating-houses. He wore his pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer. His
coats were execrable; his hat not to be handled. But while the hat was a thing of
indifference to me, inasmuch as his natural civility and deference, as a dependent
Englishman, always led him to doff it the moment he entered the room, yet his coat was
another matter. Concerning his coats, I reasoned with him; but with no effect. The truth
was, I suppose, that a man of so small an income, could not afford to sport such a lustrous
face and a lustrous coat at one and the same time. As Nippers once observed, Turkey's
money went chiefly for red ink. One winter day I presented Turkey with a
highly-respectable looking coat of my own, a padded gray coat, of a most comfortable
warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee to the neck. I thought Turkey
would appreciate the favor, and abate his rashness and obstreperousness of afternoons.
But no. I verily believe that buttoning himself up in so downy and blanket-like a coat had
a pernicious effect upon him; upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for
horses. In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his
coat. It made him insolent. He was a man whom prosperity harmed.
Though concerning the self-indulgent habits of Turkey I had my own private surmises,
yet touching Nippers I was well persuaded that whatever might by his faults in other
respects, he was, at least, a temperate young man. But indeed, nature herself seemed to
have been his vintner, and at his birth charged him so thoroughly with an irritable,
brandy-like disposition, that all subsequent potations were needless. When I consider

how, amid the stillness of