Bartleby, The Scrivener. A Story of Wall-Street

by Herman Melville

Indeed, it was his wonderful mildness chiefly, which not only disarmed me, but unmanned me, as it were.

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 hopelessness 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 rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.

“At present I prefer to give no answer,” he said, and retired into his hermitage.

calm disdain,

“At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his mildly cadaverous reply.

“Do you not see the reason for yourself,” he indifferently replied.