{"id":"01KG8AKT57PSBZ2KC2PQK37VK3","cid":"bafkreif6vphzkaauitlye2wmhkco6ijvftbg45ljy74trtciqlvdd45qte","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":1331,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:15.023Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1F4D8P9BBX9AMGZ7TX7","start_line":1278,"text":"Sunday, Wall-street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day\r\nit is an emptiness. This building, too, which of week-days hums with\r\nindustry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all\r\nthrough Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home; sole\r\nspectator, of a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of\r\ninnocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!\r\n\r\nFor the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging\r\nmelancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not\r\nunpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me\r\nirresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby\r\nwere sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I\r\nhad seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi\r\nof Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought\r\nto myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay;\r\nbut misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. These sad\r\nfancyings—chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly brain—led on to\r\nother and more special thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of\r\nBartleby. Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me. The\r\nscriveners pale form appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers,\r\nin its shivering winding sheet.\r\n\r\nSuddenly I was attracted by Bartleby’s closed desk, the key in open\r\nsight left in the lock.\r\n\r\nI mean no mischief, seek the gratification of no heartless curiosity,\r\nthought I; besides, the desk is mine, and its contents, too, so I will\r\nmake bold to look within. Everything was methodically arranged, the\r\npapers smoothly placed. The pigeon holes were deep, and removing the\r\nfiles of documents, I groped into their recesses. Presently I felt\r\nsomething there, and dragged it out. It was an old bandanna\r\nhandkerchief, heavy and knotted. I opened it, and saw it was a savings’\r\nbank.\r\n\r\nI now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted in the man. I\r\nremembered that he never spoke but to answer; that, though at intervals\r\nhe had considerable time to himself, yet I had never seen him\r\nreading—no, not even a newspaper; that for long periods he would stand\r\nlooking out, at his pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick\r\nwall; I was quite sure he never visited any refectory or eating house;\r\nwhile his pale face clearly indicated that he never drank beer like\r\nTurkey, or tea and coffee even, like other men; that he never went\r\nanywhere in particular that I could learn; never went out for a walk,\r\nunless, indeed, that was the case at present; that he had declined\r\ntelling who he was, or whence he came, or whether he had any relatives\r\nin the world; that though so thin and pale, he never complained of ill\r\nhealth. And more than all, I remembered a certain unconscious air of\r\npallid—how shall I call it?—of pallid haughtiness, say, or rather an\r\naustere reserve about him, which had positively awed me into my tame\r\ncompliance with his eccentricities, when I had feared to ask him to do\r\nthe slightest incidental thing for me, even though I might know, from\r\nhis long-continued motionlessness, that behind his screen he must be\r\nstanding in one of those dead-wall reveries of his.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AK3EN75G108JRVKV1RR8H","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1F4D8P9BBX9AMGZ7TX7","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKSGCMC57GCYJ7YSC3HXT","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AKT57GV20293M1PQ7JTNM","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:16.551Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:23.090Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}