| Newspaper columnist, playwright, and short story writer Don Marquis was born Donald Robert Perry Marquis in Walnut, Illinois (1878). He went to work at the Washington Times and then the Sun and the Tribune in New York. He had a column called "The Sun Dial." Marquis created the characters Archy the cockroach, and Mehitabel the alley cat. Archy was a former free verse poet who "sees life from the underside now." He wasn't able to reach the shift key so everything he wrote was in lower case. And Mehitabel was an alley cat with questionable morals who insisted that she was Cleopatra in one of her former lives. After using Archy and Mehitabel in columns for 10 years, Marquis made books out of their writing, beginning with archy and mehitabel (1927). Don Marquis wrote of himself, "Height, 5 feet 101/2 inches; hair, dove-colored; scar on little finger of left hand�dislikes Roquefort cheese, 'Tom Jones,' Wordsworth's poetry, absinthe cocktails, most musical comedy, public banquets, physical exercise, steam heat, toy dogs, poets who wear their souls outside, organized charity, magazine covers, and the gas company�" "the lesson of the moth," by Don Marquis from The Best of Don Marquis (Doubleday). the lesson of the moth i was talking to a moth the other evening he was trying to break into an electric light bulb and fry himself on the wires why do you fellows pull this stunt i asked him because it is the conventional thing for moths or why if that had been an uncovered candle instead of an electric light bulb you would now be a small unsightly cinder have you no sense plenty of it he answered but at times we get tired of using it we get bored with the routine and crave beauty and excitement fire is beautiful and we know that if we get too close it will kill us but what does that matter it is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while so we wad all our life up into one little roll and then we shoot the roll that is what life is for it is better to be a part of beauty for one instant and then cease to exist than to exist forever and never be a part of beauty our attitude toward life is come easy go easy we are like human beings used to be before they became too civilized to enjoy themselves and before i could argue him out of his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter i do not agree with him myself i would rather have half the happiness and twice the longevity but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himself |
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