The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel

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 letr />
  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