ays narrowly. I
observed that he never went to dinner; indeed, that he never went
anywhere. As yet I had never, of my personal knowledge, known him to be
outside of my office. He was a perpetual sentry in the corner. At about
eleven o'clock though, in the morning, I noticed that Ginger Nut would
advance toward the opening in Bartleby's screen, as if silently beckoned
thither by a gesture invisible to me where I sat. The boy would then
leave the office, jingling a few pence, and reappear with a handful of
ginger-nuts, which he delivered in the hermitage, receiving two of the
cakes for his trouble.

He lives, then, on ginger-nuts, thought I; never eats a dinner, properly
speaking; he must be a vegetarian, then; but no; he never eats even
vegetables, he eats nothing but ginger-nuts. My mind then ran on in
reveries concerning the probable effects upon the human constitution of
living entirely on ginger-nuts. Ginger-nuts are so called, because they
contain ginger as one of their peculiar constituents, and the final
flavoring one. Now, what was ginger? A hot, spicy thing. Was Bartleby
hot and spicy? Not at all. Ginger, then, had no effect upon Bartleby.
Probably, he preferred it should have none.

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the
individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting
one perfectly harmless in his passivity, then, in the better moods of
the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination
what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the
most part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he
means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence; his aspect
sufficiently evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary. He is
useful to me. I can get along with him. If I turn him away, the chances
are he will fall in with some less-indulgent employer, and then he will
be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve. Yes.
Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend
Bartleby; to humor him in his strange willfulness, will cost me little
or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet
morsel for my conscience. But this mood was not invariable, with me. The
passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me. I felt strangely goaded
on to encounter him in new opposition--to elicit some angry spark from
him answerable to my own. But, indeed, I might as