by Don Marquis
hot night like this then said henry it
is cracking with the heat i tell you
she said that is the typewriter clicking well
he said you saw for yourself the room was
empty and the door was locked it can t
be the typewriter to prove it to you
i will bring it in here he did so the
machine was set down
in the moonlight which came in one of
the windows with the key side in the
shadow there he said look at it and see
for yourself it is not being operated by any one
just then i began to write the foregoing
lines hopping from key
to key in the shadow and being anxious
to finish my
god my god cried henry losing his nerve
the machine is writing all by itself it
is a ghost and threw himself face
downward on the bed and hid his face in the
pillow and kept on saying my god my
god it is a ghost and the woman screamed
and said it is
tom higginbotham s ghost that s whose ghost
it is oh i know whose
ghost it is my conscience tells me i
jilted him when we were studying
stenography together
at the business college and he went into
a decline and died and i have always
known in my heart that he
died of unrequited love o what a
wicked girl i was and he has come
back to haunt me
i have brought a curse upon you henry chase
him away says henry trembling so the bed
shook chase him away mable you coward you
chase him away yourself says mable and both
lay and recriminated and recriminated
with their heads under the covers hot
night though it was while i wrote
the foregoing lines but after
a while it came out henry had a
stenographer on his conscience too and
they got into a row and got so
mad they forgot to be scared i will
close now this house is easily seen from the
railroad station and the woman sits in
the window and writes i will be behind the waste
paper receptacle outside the station door
come and get me i am foot sore and weary
they are still quarreling as i
close i can do no less than
say thank you mable and henry in
advance for mailing this
JULY 25
We Rushed Forward and Swatted
We are something of a fly-swatter.1 We took it up seriously as a duty some weeks ago; later it became a pleasure; now it is a habit.
All the flies have long since been slain in the house in which we live, all the flies that used to loaf around the front porch have been slain; we have even killed the flies in the garage, where the lawn mower is kept.
By the time the flies began to disappear, fly-swatting had become a sport with us. Others develop their golf and their tennis and all that sort of thing, but we rejoiced in our skill as a fly-swatter. We got so that we scorned to kill a fly sitting; we would take him as he went humming and whirling through the air. Flies began to give out, and at night we would go out after lightning bugs. The necessity to swat something grew upon us; it became a sort of monomania. The joy of swatting vanished, so that we no longer felt happy when we swatted, but we felt unhappy if we were not swatting.
We were sitting on the veranda on Sunday wishing that a fly or insect of some sort would come along and grieving for new insects to conquer when we saw coming up the gravelled drive-way, which reaches all the way from the garage to the hold in which they are going to put gas pipes some day, an insect. Our heart bounded with the passion of the chase. A speckled hen of a phlegmatic disposition cut her eye at him as he went by; she strolled along after him for two or three yards; we thought every moment that she would make a dash at him and we would be robbed of our prey. But perhaps she was too lazy; perhaps she recognized him as belonging to a species that she had eaten of before and found to disagree with her; at any rate she let him go by unscathed.
The insect moved as if he had sore feet. We are no entomologist; we can’t tell a rod away what brand an insect belongs to, except in a very rough, general sort of fashion. But this varmint was brown, and it was easy to see that he was sad. He moved gingerly, he came along cater-cornered, like a lame pup; we could not see his face; his head hung down dejectedly. Evidently he was an insect who had just suffered some discouraging experience. This, no doubt, should have moved us to pity. But when the mania for swatting grips a man he forgets pity. We rushed forward and swatted.
He died, and as he was dying we recognized him. He strove to speak, his lips moved feebly: we hope that they moved with a murmur of forgiveness, for it was Archy.2
We buried him among the roots of a rosebush. It would scarcely be in good taste to express our grief publicly—unless we did it in verse. And we do not feel like verse today. Some people may be able to hic jacet one of their best friends and then go about their business as usual, talking of it the while, but these things cut deeper with us. He had come out to see us; it had taken him weeks to make the trip; weeks of toil and trouble and even danger, and just as he was crawling to our feet we slew him.
We buried him in a little golden casket that used to be the case of a safety razor; no marauding chicken there idly scratching there shall find and desecrate his remains.
AUGUST 2
My Naked Soul
well boss here i
am a cockroach still boss
i have often been disgusted
with life but now i am
even more disgusted
with death and transmigration i
would rather not inhabit
any body at all than
inhabit a cockroachs
body but it seems i
cant escape it that
is my destiny my doom my
punishment
when you struck me that
terrific blow a few
days ago and i
died there at
your feet my first
sensation was one of glad
relief what body will
the soul of archy transmigrate
into now i asked
myself will i go
higher in the scale of
life and inhabit the
body of a butterfly
or a dog or a
bird or will i sink
lower and go into the
carcase of a poison
spider or a politician
i sat on a blade of
grass and waited and wondered
what it would be i
hoped it wouldnt be
anything at all too soon
because if you remember
it was a hot
day and as i sat
on that blade of grass
in my naked soul and
let my feet hang over i
was deliciously
cool try it some of
these hot nights leave
your body in the
bed and go up on the
roof in your
spirit and float around
like a toy balloon its
great stuff well while
i was sitting there
thinking what i
would inhabit next if
it was up to me
personally i had
a swooning sensation
and when i came
to i was in the
flesh again dad gum
it i lifted first
one leg and then
another to see what i
was this time and
imagine my chagrin and
disappo
intment when i
found myself inside
another cockroach the
exact counterpart of the
one you smashed whats
the use of dying if
it dont get you
anywhere i was so
sore i went and
murdered a tumblebug i
suppose as a cockroach
i was not good enough
to be promoted
and not bad enough to
be set back boss a
thing like that makes a
fellow feel awful humble i
came back to town in
that special delivery letter i
would rather dodge
the thing
they cancel stamps with
all day than walk again
say boss
please thank my friends
for all the kind
words and flowers i
must close in haste there
is a new rat
in your office since i
was here last i
wish you would sprinkle a
little cereal in the
bottom of the waste paper
basket
AUGUST 4
On My Recent Demise
ive been looking at
some of the letters
received on my recent demise
they reconcile me
to my fetters
i am typing with tears
in my eyes
it is worth an
occasional parting
even death at the hand
of a friend
to return and find
hearts that are smarting
at the thought
of ones untimely end
AUGUST 5 Ballade of the Under Side
by archy
the roach that scurries
skips and runs
may read far more than those
that fly
i know what family skeletons
within your closets
swing and dry
not that i ever
play the spy
but as in corners
dim i bide
i can t dodge knowledge
though i try
i see things from
the under side
the lordly ones the
haughty ones
with supercilious
heads held high
the up stage stiff
pretentious guns
miss much that meets
my humbler eye
not that i meddle
perk or pry
but i m too small
to feel great pride
and as the pompous world
goes by
i see things from
the under side
above me wheel
the stars and suns
but humans shut
me from the sky
you see their eyes as pure
as nuns
i see their wayward
feet and sly
i own and own it with
a sigh
my point of view
is somewhat wried1
i am a pessimistic
guy
i see things from the
under side
1 envoi2
prince ere you pull a bluff
and lie
before you fake
and play the snide
consider whether
archy s nigh
i see things from
the under side
AUGUST 12
Aeroplane1
well boss i have had
some experiences you know that
fellow with the teeth that glitter
and the eyes that glitter who
comes in to see you and
who has been talking about his aeroplane
for six months you thought he
was always a liar and
so did i he is the kind of a liar who
looks so much like a liar no one
believes him when he tells the
truth i thought i would call
his bluff so i crawled into
his outside breast pocket the other day
and went out to a place near mineola
with him he really has an aeroplane he
went up in it the next morning and
i went along boss i must have
picked out the wrong position i sat
on top of one of the planes thinking i would see
more of the country boss
dont ask me for any sensations the
only thing i felt was wind i felt
like a sigh in a cyclone i had
about as much control of myself as a
bullet that is going through the
barrel of an airgun i dont want
to rub anything in boss but it
was as hard to hang onto as the water
wagon2 which is a simile
you may be able to appreciate i
dug all my feet and claws
and teeth in but the wind rushed by
me like a church scandal going
through a little village i would have
felt nausea if
my stomach hadnt been scared to death
it was only a question of time before i
would let loose thank heaven i thought i am
not an elephant i didnt
want to die again so soon just because
i can come to life again is
no reason for overworking a good thing too
many deaths and transmigrations look
vulgar and ostentatious
and when i did let go i must have
been two miles high around and
around i spun whirling like a flake of
soot that has been flipped
off of a devils wing between the
worlds and is spinning back home to
hell and beneath me it looked
like hell there was a vast expanse of water
with the sun making it
seem like melted metal i suppose i said
i will get all my feet wet now and
take my death of cold if a fish
dont eat me and just then i saw
beneath me a great fish grinning as if
he had heard a joke on the
bottom of the sea and come up to
laugh at the cosmos get that
cosmic stuff boss it goes great in some
circles i lit on one of his great white teeth
and waited for the gulp that should land
me in his interior department oh
lord i said if i ever see dry land i
will never mock at that jonah story3
again i dont want to die in
midocean and be reincarnated as a
sardine or as an oyster
a cockroach isnt much but
he has a look in in society where
an oyster is never mentioned except as an
article of food but if it
must be it must be kismet and karma and
that bunch of bullies vote us the way they
please we are only instructed delegates
in the universal convention every
time i die it makes me more of a fatalist and
i waited for him to gulp but
he didnt gulp i hopped over to
the next tooth to the right as you go in
and investigated and finally climbed
out where his upper lip would have been if he had
had one and worked up to his eye it was
glassy in death i was floating on a dead shark
and it was all the more unpleasant
because he had not had any dental work done for a
long time or else he had adenoids or maybe
he had died of ptomaine poisoning boss what i
am
delicately trying to convey is
that he had been dead so long he had a right to
be ashamed of it just then i
heard human voices and looking around i saw
two young men in bathing suits and
a motor boat a shark a shark cried one
of them put her about the motor is still
busted said the other row row for your
life but wait said the first one this
shark seems deceased bill lets haul him to land
and say we slew him right o tom says
bill it will make a hit with all the girls he
attacked us says tom and i jumped into the water and
cut his throat with my jackknife you
did eh says bill what was i doing then put two
slashes into him which they did one for each and
fastened him to the stern of their boat with a
line and as they towed him to the beach with
me sitting listening they fixed
up an awful lie talk about ovations boss when they
came to the beach they got one the
more i see of human nature the less i know
whether to despise it for being so easily
gulled or for being so ready to
gull by the time they had told
that story eight times each believed that
he was telling the truth although he
still thought maybe the other one was lying well
i left those two heroes
surrounded six deep by girls and came to
town in a little bunch of dress goods samples a
commuters wife has been trying to make
him remember to match my
sympathies being with the shark poor feeble old
thing he had likely perished of old age
to be killed a second time is hard luck but
this is the truth of a story that you
may read another version of in
the news columns
AUGUST 17
Back to the Starting Point
i see where one
of your correspondents asks how
does archy get the carriage on his
typewriter back to the
starting point again when he
wants to begin a new
line i release the spring
with my left hind
leg and butt the thing over
with my head yes i am bald but my
baldness is on the outside
of my head not on the inside
like some i could name
AUGUST 18
