Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none!

"For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me.  Before, I had never experienced aught but a not-unpleasing sadness.  The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom.  A fraternal melancholy!  For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam.  I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swan-like sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.  These sad fancyings--chimeras, doubtless, of a sick and silly brain--led on to other and more special thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of Bartleby.  Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me.  The scrivener's pale form appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers, in its shivering winding sheet."