I'd Prefer Not To

The report was this: that Bartleby

had been a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter

Office at Washington, from which he had been suddenly

removed by a change in the administration.

When I think over this rumor, hardly can I express

the emotions which seize me. Dead letters! does it

not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature

and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness,

can any business seem more fitted to heighten it

than that of continually handling these dead letters,

and assorting them for the flames? For by the

cartload they are annually burned. Sometimes from

out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring —

the finger it was meant for, perhaps, molders in the

grave; a bank note sent in swiftest charity — he

whom it would relieve nor eats nor hungers any

more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope

for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those

who died stifled by unrelieved calamities. On errands

of life, these letters speed to death.

Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!

Herman Melville, "Bartelby the Scrivener"