irresistible conclusion; but, at the same time, some paramount
consideration prevailed with him to reply as he did.

"You are decided, then, not to comply with my request--a request made
according to common usage and common sense?"

He briefly gave me to understand, that on that point my judgment was
sound. Yes: his decision was irreversible.

It is not seldom the case that, when a man is browbeaten in some
unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in
his own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that,
wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the
other side. Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he
turns to them for some reinforcement for his own faltering mind.

"Turkey," said I, "what do you think of this? Am I not right?"

"With submission, sir," said Turkey, in his blandest tone, "I think that
you are."

"Nippers," said I, "what do _you_ think of it?"

"I think I should kick him out of the office."

(The reader, of nice perceptions, will here perceive that, it being
morning, Turkey's answer is couched in polite and tranquil terms, but
Nippers replies in ill-tempered ones. Or, to repeat a previous sentence,
Nippers's ugly mood was on duty, and Turkey's off.)

"Ginger Nut," said I, willing to enlist the smallest suffrage in my
behalf, "what do _you_ think of it?"

"I think, sir, he's a little _luny_," replied Ginger Nut, with a grin.

"You hear what they say," said I, turning towards the screen, "come
forth and do your duty."

But he vouchsafed no reply. I pondered a moment in sore perplexity. But
once more business hurried me. I determined again to postpone the
consideration of this dilemma to my future leisure. With a little
trouble we made out to examine the papers without Bartleby, though at
every page or two Turkey deferentially dropped his opinion, that this
proceeding was quite out of the common; while Nippers, twitching in his
chair with a dyspeptic nervousness, ground out, between his set teeth,
occasional hissing maledictions against the stubborn oaf behind the
screen. And for his (Nippers's) part, this was the first and the last
time he would do another man's business without pay.

Meanwhile Bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to everything but his
own peculiar business there.

Some days passed, the scrivener being employed upon another lengthy
work. His late remarkable conduct led me to regard his w