“Where is Archy?” ask a score or more of his friends. And we are obliged to confess that we don’t know. Has any one seen a Vers Libre Cockroach with a sore head and a dejected manner lately?
Frankly, we fear the worst.
Archy came to us a couple of weeks ago with his head hanging down. This is no figure of speech. His head was hanging down and his neck was wried and lumpy. He asked for a leave of absence. We refused it. There were words. He left anyhow. We fear the worst.
Archy, writing all his communications by the slow and painful process of butting his head against one typewriter key after another, developed a callous on his skull at the same time that his neck muscles began to weaken. He asked us for some sort of head harness, such as football players wear.1
After thinking the request over, we refused it. We cannot afford to encourage contributors in the idea that it is possible to get anything in the way of material recompense out of writing for the Sun Dial.
Buy Archy headgear and next some other poet would want a lead pencil, a pad of paper or even a theatre ticket.
Once that sort of thing starts there’s no telling where it may run to before it stops.
“Archy,” we said, “is the glory you get worth nothing to you? We’re astonished to find you so materialistic! How about art for art’s sake?”
“Well, boss,” he said, “if you won’t get me the harness so I can write without screaming every time I hit a letter, at least let me lay off for a week or two.”
We thought it over. And decided against it. Begin to treat contributors as if they were human and there’s no telling . . . there’s no telling . . . it runs into drinks and lunches the first thing you know.
“Back to the mine!” we cried. . . . Then is when he left us. . . . We still think we did right.
Still, if any one sees a Free Verse Cockroach with a low-hung calloused brow and a wried neck wandering at large, lost and in distress, we will be glad to be informed of his whereabouts.
DECEMBER 20
Arrest That Statue
i was up to central
park yesterday watching some
kids build a snow man when
they were done and had
gone away i looked it
over they had used two
little chunks of wood for
the eyes i sat on one
of these and stared at
the bystanders along came a
prudish looking
lady from flatbush she
stopped and regarded the
snow man i stood
up on my hind legs in
the eye socket and
waved myself at her
horrors she cried even the
snow men in manhattan
are immoral officer arrest
that statue it winked
at me madam said the cop
accept the tribute
as a christmas present
and be happy my own
belief is that some
people have immorality
on the brain
DECEMBER 28
Happy Inspirations
excuse me if my
writing is out of alignment i
fell into a bowl of
egg nog the other
day at the restaurant down
the street which the doctor
says he is glad to
hear you are keeping away
from and when i
emerged i was full of happy
inspirations alas they
vanished ere the break of
day i am sure they
were the most brilliant and
witty things that ever
emanated from the mind of
man or cockroach or poet i
sat inside a mince pie
and laughed and laughed at
them myself the world seemed all
one golden glory boss
i came up the
street to get all this
wonderful stuff onto paper for
you but when i tried to
operate the typewriter
my foot would slip and
by the time i had control
of the machine again
the thoughts had gone
forever it is the
tragedy of the artist
1917
JANUARY 2
That Cockroach Glide
boss you oughta been
here last night we
had a ball on
top of your desk in honor
of your getting it cleaned
for 1917 three
cockroaches a katydid
two spiders and a
peruvian flea that came
in with the decayed
gentleman who tried to sell
you his autobiography in
poetical form the
other day and compromised by
borrowing a dime finally
a thousand legs came along
and made a hit by
dancing a dozen different
dances all at once each
pair of legs keeping step to a
different tune what we
need here worst of
all is two or three crickets
for an orchestra i
am inventing a new
step called that cockroach
glide
JANUARY 27
Archy Gets His Statue Made
Some months ago the friends of Archy, unable to conceal their interest any longer, began to send insects to us by mail. The idea was, perhaps, that Archy condemned to the society of humans and poets, might be languishing for the lack of associations more distinctly entomological. At any rate, there was one week during which we received, in trust for Archy, boxes containing the following insects:
One croton bug, alive.
One small roach, gone before.
One small mutilated roach, gone quite a long way before.
One grasshopper, alive and voting.
One large roach, alive and suffering from overfeeding, in a box which contained also a piece of toast, plastered over with welsh rabbit.
One small red and black spider, gone before.
One infinitesimal smear, purporting to be the physical remains of a defunct flea.
None of these things was acknowledged at the time. It was evident that some little group of serious drinkers were spoofing us, and using Archy as a peg to hang their practical wit upon. We had no bird to feed the insects to, and we did not dare or care to encourage the spread of the pastime by noticing it in print. We sent Archy into the silences for a few weeks, hoping that when he emerged again the Cockroach Shower would have ceased.
But we received last week a pedestrian statue of Archy, which, because of its artistic excellence, we are obliged to notice—and acknowledge. It is by Mrs. Helena Smith Dayton, and represents Archy as we ourself have always imagined him to be—a bit of the scholar, with the scholar’s stoop, a bit of the pedant, the highbrow, determined to mix with lowbrows on terms of equality—a superior insect, resolutely democratic for the moment because of what he might learn—a distinctly literary creat
ure, reaching out to life for literary purposes only, and interested in nothing not susceptible of being ground into grist in the literary mill—not a cockroach reaching up into art from life, but a cockroach consciously condescending to life and leaning toward it from the pedestal of art—a bug being vulgar now and then with an effort and solely for the sake of capturing the franchise of the majorities—a supercilious cockroach hiding his superciliousness under the affectation of being hail-fellow-well-met with all sorts and conditions of men, a spy scurrying among the lower classes, so-called, for the purpose of reporting them amusingly to his particular clientele . . . ; he thinks sincerely that he is seeing life from the under side, whereas he brings to the examination of the under side his literary preconceptions and prejudices.
JANUARY 30
Statue of Myself
say boss but its great to
be famous when i saw that pedestrian
statue of myself on your desk i reflected that not