As I walked home in a pensive mood, my vanity got the better of my pity.  I could not but highly plume myself on my masterly management in getting rid of Bartleby.  Masterly I call it, and such it must appear to any dispassionate thinker.  The beauty of my procedure seemed to consist in its perfect quietness.  There was no vulgar bullying, no bravado of any sort, no choleric hectoring, and striding to and fro across the apartment, jerking out vehement commands for Bartleby to bundle himself off with his beggarly traps.  Nothing of the kind.  Without loudly bidding Bartleby depart—­as an inferior genius might have done—­I assumed the ground that depart he must; and upon that assumption built all I had to say.  The more I thought over my procedure, the more I was charmed with it.  Nevertheless, next morning, upon awakening, I had my doubts—­I had somehow slept off the fumes of vanity.  One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.  My procedure seemed as sagacious as ever—­but only in theory.  How it would prove in practice—­there was the rub.  It was truly a beautiful thought to have assumed Bartleby’s departure; but, after all, that assumption was simply my own, and none of Bartleby’s.  The great point was, not whether I had assumed that he would quit me, but whether he would prefer so to do.  He was more a man of preferences than assumptions.

After breakfast, I walked down town, arguing the probabilities pro and con.  One moment I thought it would prove a miserable failure, and Bartleby would be found all alive at my office as usual; the next moment it seemed certain that I should find his chair empty.  And so I kept veering about.  At the corner of Broadway and Canal street, I saw quite an excited group of people standing in earnest conversation.

“I’ll take odds he doesn’t,” said a voice as I passed.

“Doesn’t go?—­done!” said I, “put up your money.”

I was instinctively putting my hand in my pocket to produce my own, when I remembered that this was an election day.  The words I had overheard bore no reference to Bartleby, but to the success or non-success of some candidate for the mayoralty.  In my intent frame of mind, I had, as it were, imagined that all Broadway shared in my excitement, and were debating the same question with me.  I passed on, very thankful that the uproar of the street screened my momentary absent-mindedness.

As I had intended, I was earlier than usual at my office door.  I stood listening for a moment.  All was still.  He must be gone.  I tried the knob.  The door was locked.  Yes, my procedure had worked to a charm; he indeed must be vanished.  Yet a certain melancholy mixed with this:  I was almost sorry for my brilliant success.  I was fumbling under the door mat for the key, which Bartleby was to have left there for me, when accidentally my knee knocked against a panel, producing a summoning sound, and in response a voice came to me from within—­“Not yet; I am occupied.”