NO, ARCHY... AGATE, TO REBUKE YOUR INCREASING PRIDE
dear boss i have worked
pretty hard over the
following poem not only to
make it rhyme but
also butting it out on the
typewriter with my head one
letter at a time so wont you please
just this once set it in
large type i get awfully tired of
butting out poems and seeing
them always printed in
nonpareil let me have brevier
just this once boss
Prudence
i do not think a prudent one
will ever aim too high
a cockroach seldom whips a dog
and seldom should he try
and should a locust take a vow
to eat a pyramid
he likely would wear out his teeth
before he ever did
i do not think the prudent one
hastes to initiate
a sequence of events which he
lacks power to terminate
for should i kick the woolworth tower
so hard i laid it low
it probably might injure me
if it fell on my toe
i do not think the prudent one
will be inclined to boast
lest circumstances unforseen
should get him goat and ghost
for should i tell my friends i d drink
the hudson river dry
a tidal wave might come and turn
my statements to a lie
NOVEMBER 23
Too Romantic to Work
well boss mehitabel the cat
has turned up again after a long
absence she declines
to explain her movements but she
drops out dark hints of a
most melodramatic nature ups and downs
archy she says always ups and downs
that is what my life has
been one day lapping
up the cream de la cream and the
next skirmishing for
fish heads in an alley but
toujours gai archy toujours gai no
matter how the luck broke i have had a
most romantic life archy talk
about reincarnation and transmigration
archy why i could tell you things of who
i used to be archy that would make
your eyes stick out like a snails one
incarnation queening it with a tarara on
my bean as cleopatra archy and
the next being abducted as a poor
working girl but toujours gai archy toujours
gai and finally my soul has migrated to
the body of a cat and not even a persian or
a maltese at that but where have you been
lately mehitabel i asked her never mind
archy she says dont ask no questions
and i will tell no lies all i
got to say to keep away
from the movies have you been in the
movies mehitabel i asked her never mind
archy she says never mind all i got to
say is keep away from those
movie camps theres some mighty
nice people and animals connected with them
and then again theres some that aint i
say nothing against anybody archy i am
used to ups and downs no matter
how luck breaks its toujours gai
with me all i got to say
archy is that sometimes a cat
comes along that is a perfect gentleman and
then again some of the slickest furred ones
aint if i was a cat that was the
particular pet of a movie star archy and
slept on a silk cushion and had
white chinese rats especially
imported for my meals i would try to live
up to all that luxury and be a
gentleman in word and deed mehitabel i said
have you had another unfortunate romance i am
making no complaint against any
one archy she says wottell archy wottell even
if the breaks is bad my motto is toujours gai
but to slip out nights and sing and frolic
under the moon with a lady and then cut her
dead in the day time before your rich
friends and see her batted out of a studio
with a broom without raising a paw for her
aint what i call being a
gentleman archy and i am
a lady archy and i know a gentleman when
i meet one but wottell archy wottell toujours
gai is the word never say die
archy its the cheerful heart that wins all i
got to say is that if i ever get that
fluffy haired slob down on the
water front when some of my gang
is around he will wish he had
watched his step i aint vindictive archy i
dont hold grudges no lady does but i
got friends archy that maybe would take it
up for me theres a black cat with one ear
sliced off lives down around old slip is a
good pal of mine i wouldnt want to
see trouble start archy no real lady
wants a fight to start over her but
sometimes she cant hold her friends back
all i got to say is that boob with his silver
bells around his neck better sidestep old slip
well archy lets not talk any more about my troubles
does the boss ever leave any pieces of sandwich
in the waste paper basket any more honest
archy i would will myself to a furrier for a
pair of oysters i could even she says eat you
archy she said it like a joke but there
was a kind of a pondering look in her eyes
so i just crawled into the inside of
your typewriter behind the wires it
seemed safer let her hustle for a
mouse if she is as hungry as all that
but i am afraid she never will she
is too romantic to work
NOVEMBER 27
I Knew a Ghost
the longer i live the more i
realize that everything is
relative even morality is
relative things you would not do
sometimes you would do other
times for instance i would not consider
it honorable in me as a
righteous cockroach to crawl into a
near sighted man s soup that
man would not have a sporting chance but
with a man with ordinarily good eye
sight i should say it was
up to him to watch his soup himself and
yet if i was very tired and hungry
i would crawl into even a near
sighted man s soup knowing all the
time it was wrong and my necessity would
keep me from reproaching myself too
bitterly afterwards you can
not make any hard and fast rule
concerning the morality of crawling into
soup nor anything else a certain
alloy of expediency improves the
gold of morality and makes
it wear all the longer consider a
ghost if i were a ghost i
would not haunt ordinary people but i
would have all the fun i wanted to with
spiritualists for spiritualists are
awful nuisances
to ghosts i knew a
ghost by the name of clarence one
time who hated spiritualists with a
great hatred you see said clarence they
give me no rest they have got my
number once one of those psychics gets a
ghost s number so he has to come
when he is called they work him till
the astral sweat stands out in beads
on his spectral brow they seem to think
said clarence that all a spook has to do
is to stick around waiting to dash in
with a message as to whether mrs millionbucks
pet pom has pneumonia or only wheezes
because he has been eating too many
squabs clarence was quite
bitter about it but wait he says till
the fat medium with the red nose
that has my number
passes over and i can get my
clutches on him on equal terms there s
going to be some initiation beside
the styx several of the boys are
sore on him a plump chance i have
don t i to improve myself and pass on
to another star with that medium
yanking me into somebody s parlor to
blow through one of these little tin
trumpets any time of the day or night
honest archy he says i hate the sight of a
ouija board would it be moral he
says to give that goof a bum tip on the
stock market life ain t worth
dying he says if you ve got to fag
for some chinless chump of a psychic
nor death ain t worth living
through would it be moral in me to
queer that simp with his
little circle by saying he s got an
anonymous diamond brooch in his pocket
and that his trances are rapidly developing
his kleptomania no clarence i said it
wouldn t be moral but it
might be expedient there s a ghost
around here i have been trying to get
acquainted with but he is shy i think he is
probably afraid of cockroaches
DECEMBER 3
That Ghost That Loafs
well boss i have
finally succeeded in getting into
touch with that
ghost that loafs around here he
is a sort of a tired out
timid kind of a ghost and
says he wants it understood that he
is doing no haunting he hangs
around your office nights because it is
quiet he says and he hopes you
wont be harsh with him and
put him out he is hiding from a
bunch of spiritualists he
says one medium in particular who
has been working him nearly to
distraction he told me some of
his experiences with
spiritualists and it is a
most pathetic tale which i
will communicate to
you later
DECEMBER 8
Superior
the high cost of
living isn t so bad if you
dont have to pay for it i met
a flea the other day who
was grinning all over
himself why so merry why so
merry little bolshevik i asked him
i have just come from a swell
dog show he said i have
been lunching off a dog that was
worth at least one hundred
dollars a pound you should be
ashamed to brag about it i said with so
many insects and humans on
short rations in the world today the
public be damned he said i
take my own where i find it those are
bold words i told him i am a bold
person he said and bold words are
fitting for me it was
only last thursday that i marched
bravely into the zoo
and bit a lion what did he do i asked
he lay there and took it said
the flea what else could he do he knew i
had his number and it was
little use to struggle some day i said
even you will be conquered terrible as
you are who will do it he
said the mastodons are all dead and i
am not afraid of any mere
elephant i asked him how about a microbe and
he turned pale as he thought it
over there is always some
little thing that is too
big for us every
goliath has his david and so on ad finitum
but what said the flea is the
terror of the smallest microbe of all
he i said is afraid of a vacuum what is
there in a vacuum to make one afraid
said the flea there is nothing in it
i said and that is what makes one
afraid to contemplate it a person
can t think of a place with nothing at
all in it without going nutty and if he
tries to think that nothing is
something after all he gets nuttier you are
too subtle for me said the
flea i never took much stock in being
scared of hypodermic propositions or
hypothetical injections i am
going to have dinner off a
man eating tiger if a vacuum gets
me i will try and send you word
before the worst comes to
the worst some people i told him inhabit
a vacuum all their lives and
never know it then he said it don t
hurt them any no i said it dont but it
hurts people who have to associate
with them and with these words
we parted each feeling
superior to the other and is not that
feeling after all one of the great
desiderata of social intercourse
DECEMBER 10
Sad Looking Ghost
the ghost i was telling you
about the other day is named emmet and
he is a tall thin sad looking
ghost with a long drooping
nose and a bald retreating forehead he is a
very timid ghost and
vanishes quickly at any unexpected
noise i will tell you the
truth said emmet i am a bit afraid of
human beings they are so rough i met one in the
corridor the other morning about three
oclock and he threw a heavy book right through
me later i realized that he must have
been as much afraid of
me as i was of him just then mehitabel came in
and emmet vanished it was five
minutes before i could coax him to appear
again i have always been a
bit afraid of cats said emmet cheer o said
mehitabel dont look so
melancholy gay is the word my boy tell me
the story of your life how
did you come to be a ghost anyhow emmet
was quite thoughtful for a moment and
he got sadder and sadder and then he
said i will conceal nothing
from you it was drink
that did it the story of emmet the
ghost will be continued in an
early number
DECEMBER 21
Bore His Way Out
F. W. P. says: “I am informed by one of the military that it takes exactly three days for a flea to bore through an army shirt. It has therefore been found easy to thwart this evil beast’s designs by turning the shirt inside out every day and a half. It
occurs to me that if your cockroach friend, archy, were properly approached he might consent to secure similar statistics on civilian shirts, thereby conferring a great boon on mankind in general.”
We put the matter up to archy, and in due time received the following communication from that industrious little animal: