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<text>
<front>
<tPage>
<dTitle type=main>Bartleby, the Scrivener.</dTitle>
<dTitle type=sub>A Story of Wall-street.</dTitle>
<byLine>by 
<dAuthor>Herman Melville</dAuthor> </byLine>
</tPage>
</front>
<body>
<div>
<p>I AM a rather elderly man. 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:&mdash;I mean the law-copyists or scriveners. 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. But I waive the biographies of all other 
scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener 
the strangest I ever saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists I might 
write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. . . .