For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me.  Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness.  The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom.  A fraternal melancholy!  For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam.  I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.  These sad fancyings—­chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly brain—­led on to other and more special thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of Bartleby.  Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me.  The scriveners pale form appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers, in its shivering winding sheet.

Suddenly I was attracted by Bartleby’s closed desk, the key in open sight left in the lock.

I mean no mischief, seek the gratification of no heartless curiosity, thought I; besides, the desk is mine, and its contents, too, so I will make bold to look within.  Everything was methodically arranged, the papers smoothly placed.  The pigeon holes were deep, and removing the files of documents, I groped into their recesses.  Presently I felt something there, and dragged it out.  It was an old bandanna handkerchief, heavy and knotted.  I opened it, and saw it was a savings’ bank.

I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted in the man.  I remembered that he never spoke but to answer; that, though at intervals he had considerable time to himself, yet I had never seen him reading—­no, not even a newspaper; that for long periods he would stand looking out, at his pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall; I was quite sure he never visited any refectory or eating house; while his pale face clearly indicated that he never drank beer like Turkey, or tea and coffee even, like other men; that he never went anywhere in particular that I could learn; never went out for a walk, unless, indeed, that was the case at present; that he had declined telling who he was, or whence he came, or whether he had any relatives in the world; that though so thin and pale, he never complained of ill health.  And more than all, I remembered a certain unconscious air of pallid—­how shall I call it?—­of pallid haughtiness, say, or rather an austere reserve about him, which had positively awed me into my tame compliance with his eccentricities, when I had feared to ask him to do the slightest incidental thing for me, even though I might know, from his long-continued motionlessness, that behind his screen he must be standing in one of those dead-wall reveries of his.