more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames?  For by the cart-load they are annually burned.  Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring:—­the finger it was meant for, perhaps, moulders 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!