Donald Robert Perry Marquis (1878-1937) was a celebrated New York newspaper columnist and humorist in the early decades of the last century. Today he is remembered mostly for his stories of Archy and Mehitabel, a lowercase cockroach and a toujours gai alley cat, but in his lifetime Marquis was known equally well for the Old Soak — a hip-flask philosopher who struggled to endure the dry days of Prohibition. Altogether, he wrote five plays, dozens of books, and hundreds of poems and short stories.

Columnist, playwright, humorist, short story writer and screenwriter, Marquis also wrote several volumes of serious poetry and three full-length novels — a remarkable range of talents. While many of his stories are forgettable today, there are others — most notably the observations of a cockroach and an alley cat — that remain fresh and funny and unique in American literature. It’s a curious fact that none of Marquis’ books ever appeared on the best-seller lists, yet so many of the better-selling writers of his time are now virtually unknown. “Archy and Mehitabel,” meanwhile, has never gone out of print since it first appeared, 75 years ago.

Besides giving him a humorus outlet for blunt social criticism, Archy and Mehitabel and the other characters solved a recurring problem for Marquis: Many of their stories were written in advance, and they easily filled his column when he was running short of copy. It was a daunting task to fill a 23-inch column six days a week, but Marquis did it cleverly, and gracefully. Archy’s wide-ranging commentary was especially useful, and its short, broken lines of type were explained away by the obvious challenges of a cockroach trying to operate a typewriter.

One of my favorite quotes by Don Marquis is this one: “When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: ‘Whose?’”

Anyhow, to get to the point of this post, here’s one of Marquis’s quotes that has always been and will always continue to be 100% correct. It’s not the “sad” reality, it’s simply the reality.

If you're new here and have found useful information, please subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up for free Email updates. There are daily updates and you should stay tuned. Thanks for visiting!