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. All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man. 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. 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. 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. 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. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small. I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. While of other law-copyists I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. 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. 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.

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.

Melville scrivener