by Don Marquis
at all they say
aha too full for
utterance sometimes i
bate the world
archy
a close call
thank you boss for the
swiss cheese i hardly hoped
for a whole one i
took up quarters in it at once
the little galleries and caves and
runways appealed to
my sense of adventure after
i had made a square
meal i lay down in the inner
chamber for a nap feeling
safe i had hardly composed my limbs
for slumber when i heard
a gnawing sound and squeaks
of glee cautiously i
approached the north gallery a mouse
was there i hastily
retreated thinking i would make
my escape by way of one of the
windows on the south facade another
mouse was there the citadel
in short was attacked on all sides mice
mice mice coming nearer and nearer
their cold blooded squeaks and the champing
of their cruel teeth made the night
hideous minute after minute i lay
in the stokehold
until the slow minutes grew into
intolerable hours of agony great drops
of perspiration broke through the callus
on my brow i prayed for
dawn or the night watchman suddenly
into my retreat protruded a whisker it
was so near it tickled me closer and
closer it came it twitched i knew
that it had felt me a moment more and
all would be over just as
i prepared myself for another
transmigration mehitabel the cat
bounded into the room and i was saved
if you get me another cheese please
put a wire cage over it
archy
kidding the boss
well boss if i
were you i would not
put too much
trust in the
candor of those people
who tell you that you
will ever learn to
play kelley pool a
cockroach who lives
in one of the
pockets of the
pool table of that place
where you are so
often inveigled into playing
tells me that he
has never yet had to
dodge a ball that
you hit he sticks his
head out of his dugout
and watches the
game in perfect security
while you are shooting he
says it is a shame
the way you fall for the
flattery of those who
tell you that you are
improving my only
interest in the
matter is connected
with the fact that if
you wasted less
money on what will
always remain a game of
chance to you
you might be able to
do the square thing by
me and slip a
little money my way
now and then
for my contributions
archy
a sermon
well boss here
we are on the job again
you simply cannot
keep a good bug down
as a cockroach friend
of mine once
remarked to a fat man
who had
inadvertently
swallowed him along
with a portion
of hungarian goulash
although the remark
i understand
originated with jonah
well the main
thing is to keep
cheerful in spite
of the ups and
downs as i
heard an oyster
remark to his mate
last evening
only six weeks till
may says he
and if we go that long
without being eaten
we will get through
till September and
maybe by that time
nobody will want to
eat us no such
luck for us says
she nonsense says
he be more optimistic
i have noticed
every year that if
i get through
march i always
get through the rest
of the year
and just at that
moment a waiter
put the melancholy
oyster on a plate to
be served and eaten
and rejected the
cheerful oyster
there is a great
moral lesson
in this i pick
up a great many
little sermons of this
sort in my capacity as a
roach about town
archy
difficulties of art
boss why dont you get a
ribbon put into your typewriter it is only
after the most desperate exertions that
i am able to pound out these few lines i
had to get a sheet of carbon paper
and insert it between two sheets of white paper
and fix it in the machine in order to
write at all and would never have got it
done if it hadnt been that mehitabel the
cat and all the rest of the gang
around here helped me i had something
important i wanted to write you but all this
frightful physical labor has driven it out
of my mind it is always so with the
artist by the time he has overcome the
difficulties that lie between him and
his masterpiece
he is tired i wish you would get me an
electric typewriter and why not have me
endowed so i would not have to worry about
material things at all i would like to write
and eat and sleep and not work at anything else
archy
We said to Archy the other day: “You are welcome to our house any time you wish, if you come alone. But please cease bringing your friends and kinsfolk with you.” To which he replied:
boss
you should have learned
by this time
that literature
makes strange
bedfellows
the captain s little golden headed daughter flung crumbs to the hungry porpoises
a spiggoty hero
i met a big spiggoty cockroach
down by one of the
docks where the fruit steamships come in
the other day who says he
is quite a hero
the deed he did will soon be
shown in the movies he thinks for
he is certain that a camera
man was present
an american battleship was going through
one of the locks of the
panama canal he says and
the captain s little golden
headed daughter was sitting in the
bows flinging crumbs from a sea
biscuit to the hungry porpoises
which flocked about the vessel when
in hurling a large crumb she lost her
balance and fell overboard the
old lock keeper immediately became rattled the
ship was half way through the gate when
the child fell among the
porpoises and the old lock keeper
saw her fall and let
loose of the lever
the ponderous gates were swinging shut and
both the battleship and the
little golden haired girl would
have been caught between them and
pinched into nothingness if
this spiggoty cockroach
according to his story had not retained his
presence of mind
he gave one leap he says and landed
on one of the cog wheels that
are worked by the old lock keeper s lever
he braced himself between a cog on one
wheel and a cog on the other and
exerted all his strength and in
an instant the machinery was stopped because
the wheels could no longer revolve he
made himself a wedge he says
it was a great strain he says and the
pressure on his forehead and feet was
something frightful the old lock keeper
plunged in among the porpoises and handed up
the little golden haired girl
to the ship and just then the captain of
the vessel noticed that the
heroic cockroach was weakening and hastily
sent a cabin boy to find a
bootjack which when found
he inserted among the cogs thus
releasing the heroic cockroach who fell
unconscious to the deck of the vessel the
old lock keeper returned to his duty grasped the
lever again and the bootjack was
removed the ship sailing onward happy
and safe the captain insisted on decorating
him in front of the crew for his
heroism he would have shown me the decorations
he said but on his way north he
was very hungry and ate them up
in his sleep one night he dreamed he
was eating he says and when he woke at
dawn he found the decorations had
disappeared but he did show me the scars
on his forehead and feet to
prove his story i will not say there
was rum on the ship that he came north on but
i will say that there was
something that did not smell quite like
molasses on his breath as he talked to me and i
should like to see the movie
films before i underwrite the story i told
him so and he acted sad and
injured if i had been lying he said i
could have thought of a better lie than
that something more picturesque i would have
said that the old lock keepers whiskers got caught
in the cog wheels and he was
being slowly drawn into the
machinery and would have
died a horrible death and that i
rescued him as well as the little
girl and the battleship well we went
down the street and met another
roach a friend of mine and this
spiggoty told the story to him and when he
told it he said that the old
lock keepers whiskers had been caught and
so forth
and showed a gray horsehair he had
picked up on the street a moment before and
said it was a hair from the old
lock keepers beard which he
had given him as a keepsake in
vino veritas may be right but rum if
it was rum i smelled seems to work
differently
archy
sociological
when the cold weather
comes i always
get a new interest in sociology
i am almost human that way
it worries me as to how
the other half
are going to get through
the winter
last evening i went
into a cheap eating house
and dropped into a beef stew
and had a warm bath
and a bite to eat
and listened afterwards
to a couple of bums
who had begged enough
during the day to get a supper
they were talking
about this new movement
on the part of the jobless
and homeless
to take possession of the churches
and live there during
the cold weather
said the first bum
i dont think i could do it
it would bring up
too many associations
you see i am a minister s son
you too exclaimed the second bum
why i also
am the son of a preacher
my father was a minister
in small towns all his life
he worked himself to death at it
he never got paid enough
to live on
and it was not until i left home
and became a hobo that i ever
got as much as i wanted to eat
at one meal
precisely my experience
said the other bum
have you ever had any temptation
said number one
to quit being a hobo
and take a regular job
yes said number two
very often
but i have always had
the strength of character
to resist temptation
it is my duty to my fellow men
to see that they have
material on which to wreak
their passion to be charitable
during the christmas holidays
it makes the well to do
more comfortable and gives
them a warm virtuous glow
when they give me a dime
and i should not feel justified
in taking from them
such a simple and inexpensive pleasure
yes said the other bum
the rich we have always with us
they are the great problem of the age
we must treat them as well
as we can and help them
to have a little fun by the way
so that they can forget
at least temporarily
the biblical assurance
that it is as hard for them to enter
the kingdom of heaven
as for a camel
to pass through a needle s eye
well said the other one
sometimes i think i would
be willing to change places
with a rich man
and run the risk
oh certainly said the other
i have never had any instinctive
hatred for riches
it is only work that i detest
riches are all very well
if you inherit them
but i doubt if they are worth
toiling for
think of all the millions
toiling miserably in order
to be damned
it is a pathetic sight
but if one inherits riches
he knows that the fates
have doomed him to be damned
before his birth
and it is of little use to struggle
that is far different from striving
desperately all one s life
to lay up enough wealth
to damn one
i perceive said his new found friend
that your early training
has stayed by you
you have a truly religious nature
yes replied the other
at the cost of great
personal sacrifice in many ways
i have kept myself
an object of charit
y
in order to foster
the spirituality of the well to do
the most passionate piety
could do but little more
but if you had inherited
great riches said the other bum
would you have given them to the poor
i doubt was the reply
that i would have felt justified
in doing that
i would more likely have said to myself
that providence
had by that token
marked me out as one destined
to hell fire
and i would have considered it
impious to struggle against
the manifest wishes of heaven
well sighed the other
life is full of terrible problems
indeed it is
rejoined his friend
but i am afraid that i shall
never solve even the least of them
when i am empty and cold
i am not in the mood for meditation
and when i am warm and replete
i go to sleep
the few guiding principles
i learned in father s church
have carried me thus far
and i shall go on to the end
never thinking beyond them
i merely apply them literally
and they work
they have made me what i am
he concluded complacently
archy
never blame the booze
as i go up and down the town
hither to and fro i gather many a
smile and frown and talk of
thus and so i lately
listened and i heard two chaps
their luck bewail life did not get
a pleasant word they
told an awful tale for one of them
had just been fired he
glummed and wondered why he cried
into his beer
aspired
to punch the boss his eye too
true the other one exclaimed this
world s a burning shame the
game of living has been framed it is
a rotten game and ever as they railed
at fate and wooed the sombre muse
they steadily absorbed a great
sufficiency of booze but neither one
that cursed his luck and beat his burning bean
would blame the downfall on the truck
that passed his lips between
and as i listened there i thought it were
more candid far to give its dues to what they bought
across the varnished bar they should indeed
be far more frank about their hard lucks boss
they should remark
each genial tank unto their bosses faces
you can t expect a man to drink as much as i do boss
and have much time to work and think
and put the job across
oh boss you ask too much of me
i do the best i can but who can lush
continually and be a working man