"Herman Melville - Bartleby The Scrivener" - читать интересную книгу автора (Melville Herman)

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 upstairs 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 spyglass to bring out its
lurking beauties, but, for the benefit of all nearsighted spectators,
was pushed up to within ten feet of my windowpanes. 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 remainder of
the twenty-four hours. Not that he was absolutely idle or averse to
business then; far from it. The difficulty was, he was apt to be
altogether too energetic. There was a strange, inflamed, flurried,
flighty recklessness of activity about him. He would be incautious
in dipping his pen into his inkstand. All his blots upon my
documents were dropped there after twelve o'clock, meridian.
Indeed, not only would he be reckless and sadly given to making
blots in the afternoon, but some days he went further and was
rather noisy. At such times, too, his face flamed with augmented
blazonry, as if cannel coal had been heaped on anthracite. He