Some time prior to the period at which this little history begins, my avocations had been largely increased.  The good old office, now extinct in the State of New York, of a Master in Chancery, had been conferred upon me.  It was not a very arduous office, but very pleasantly remunerative.  I seldom lose my temper; much more seldom indulge in dangerous indignation at wrongs and outrages; but, I must be permitted to be rash here, and declare, that I consider the sudden and violent abrogation of the office of Master in Chancery, by the new Constitution, as a ——­ premature act; inasmuch as I had counted upon a life-lease of the profits, whereas I only received those of a few short years.  But this is by the way.

My chambers were up stairs, at No. ——­ Wall street.  At one end, they looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious skylight shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom.

This view might have been considered rather tame than otherwise, deficient in what landscape painters call “life.”  But, if so, the view from the other end of my chambers offered, at least, a contrast, if nothing more.  In that direction, my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but, for the benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes.  Owing to the great height of the surrounding buildings, and my chambers being on the second floor, the interval between this wall and mine not a little resembled a huge square cistern.

At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I had two persons as copyists in my employment, and a promising lad as an office-boy.  First, Turkey; second, Nippers; third, Ginger Nut.  These may seem names, the like of which are not usually found in the Directory.  In truth, they were nicknames, mutually conferred upon each other by my three clerks, and were deemed expressive of their respective persons or characters.  Turkey was a short, pursy Englishman, of about my own age—­that is, somewhere not far from sixty.  In the morning, one might say, his face was of a fine florid hue, but after twelve o’clock, meridian—­his dinner hour—­it blazed like a grate full of Christmas coals; and continued blazing—­but, as it were, with a gradual wane—­till six o’clock, P.M., or thereabouts; after which, I saw no more of the proprietor of the face, which, gaining its meridian with the sun, seemed to set with it, to rise, culminate, and decline the following day, with the like regularity and undiminished glory.  There are many singular coincidences I have known in the course of my life, not the least among which was the fact, that, exactly when Turkey displayed his fullest beams from his red and radiant countenance, just then, too, at that critical moment, began the daily period when I considered his business capacities as seriously disturbed for the