I think I am going to be rich.”ĭon was always worried about money that probably explains why he loved fantastic stories about coming riches.īut most of all Don liked to play with words.
This oilman from Texas says the Philadelphia map shows where to drill the next well and he has cut me in on the royalty. He is going to make me my suit for eighteen dollars, two per cent discount for cash, and he says I will be a knockout. I showed this Philadelphia map to a Greek waiter I know and he told me that it was as simple as two and two. If you go to a Fifth Avenue tailor they cost a lot of money. I have got to attend one of those Fifth Avenue weddings pretty soon and I haven’t got the right clothes. He dismissed the expensive architect and called a contractor, and the house is going forward with everyone delighted. So I showed him the Philadelphia map and he looked it over, and there was exactly what he wanted. He wanted to build a house and his architect was no good. He said it was the best gin he ever made. He made the gin, sold it, and paid me a thousand dollars. I showed him the map of Philadelphia and sure enough it worked. I stopped at a filling station and got a map of Philadelphia did me no good as far as getting out of the place, but when I finally stumbled out and got back to New York, I found a bootlegger I knew and he wanted to make a tank of bathtub gin, but he had lost his recipe. “But it is all going to turn out all right. But Philadelphia was a famous place for motorists to get lost, and now he was going into his dead-pan act.) During fifteen years I certainly never saw him drive a car, nor ever heard of his driving one. “I drove down to Philadelphia,” he answered, “and got lost.” (Don always made up these stories on the instant. What news of you?” (We had played pool together the evening before.) One snowy December night I met Don in the Players’ Club and said: “I haven’t seen you for ten days. Crowell found this delightful sketch of his friendship with Don Marquis, the American humorist, who in the 1920’s had the country in stitches over the antics of Archy the Cockroach and Mehitabel the Cat. CROWELL, beloved contributor to the Saturday Evening Post, was at work on his autobiography at the time of his death. What the Internal Revenue Bureau was doing with these lady cockroaches he did not know, but he knew a little about the Internal Revenue Bureau, and he “feared a fate worse than death.”ĬHESTER T. Then Don leaned still farther forward and whispered. But the Internal Revenue Bureau had found and seized them under the order of distraint. Still worse, Don had discovered, in the course of his search for Archy, that Archy had a large and profitable harem of lady cockroaches, the income from which had not been reported. But, as matters stood, both were likely to land in the poorhouse.
If he could find Archy and renew their profitable relations, he would be glad to lend him some money. This cut communication and made further articles about Archy impossible, thus robbing Don of a major portion of his income. Archy, being very ignorant, was afraid that he might spend the remainder of his life in a debtors’ prison, and had fled. He was also uneasy lest he be involved in possible criminal charges as Archy’s accomplice in flimflamming Uncle Sam. The Internal Revenue Bureau had issued an order of distraint and Don’s paste pot had been sequestered, to his great annoyance. And now he had lied about the quantity of paste. He lied about the number of my paste pots he has consumed.” Archy the Cockroach, if you recall him, lived off Don’s paste pot. There were dozens of these dead-pan acts, but one will serve adequately as an example.ĭon leaned across the luncheon table and said in a low tone: “I haven’t seen Archy for days. I would walk into the Players’ Club, find him, and ask, with anxious tone and expression: “How’s Archy?” Don would pretend that he was troubled, and just a bit uncertain about taking me into his confidence. Don and I were companions over a period of about fifteen years. Editors would order six Archy the Cockroach and Mehitabel the Cat pieces and turn down two or three, but a listening audience never failed to register ecstatic enjoyment.
LIKE most humorists, Don Marquis greatly enjoyed giving away his best in conversation writing was hard work and the results always unpredictable.
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