The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel

mistake i wish to state

  publicly that i am not the

  person the salary i receive for

  my writings in the sun

  dial falls considerably below that

  figure even in good

  years yours for

  vers libre as usual

  JUNE 21

  The Raiding Habit

  boss please leave your

  door locked nights and

  the keyhole open there is

  no telling when i

  may want to enter

  quickly leaving some large

  uniformed person

  on the outside the

  district attorney1 has the

  raiding habit very

  badly his maxim seems to

  be in case of doubt

  raid what is set before

  you the turn of the

  insects will come next no

  doubt it is true that

  after making his raids he

  seldom brings people to trial

  but that may only be

  because he has no

  evidence and in the

  meantime one has been

  raided i think

  perhaps he is suffering

  from a case of

  psychological suggestion it

  is the word raid

  which appeals to him and

  inflames his imagination he

  sees it in the papers

  perhaps in connection with

  the war and every time

  he reads of a trench

  raid he pulls a

  raid here at least

  that is one explanation

  yours for less—and

  better government

  Archy tells us that he is busily engaged organizing an army of potato bugs to crawl into Germany and eat the new crop. All he wants is transportation assured him.

  JUNE 24

  A Loyal Allied Cootie1

  sir you stated in the

  sun dial the other day that archy

  was to lead an army of potato

  bugs into germany to eat the

  crop you have been

  misinformed and it is my request that

  you give this correction as prominent

  place as you gave

  your original error otherwise i

  shall be compelled to bring suit

  against the sun dial i

  take no stock in any of

  these get peace quick schemes and

  more than that you do

  me an injury when you

  imply that i habitually

  associate with potato

  bugs the potato bug is one of the

  least intelligent of insects and

  his moral character is

  not above reproach i do

  not wish to muckrake even

  the lower animals but i

  could tell you a lot about the

  sort of life led by

  potato bugs if i chose the

  potato bug is entirely

  untrustworthy i would be willing to

  use him against germany if i

  were not sure that he

  would prove a traitor to the cause he

  would immediately begin to eat

  allied rations upon his arrival in france

  this potato bug story was put

  over on you by some

  german

  propagandist i met with

  a cootie that came back from france

  recently who has been in the

  german trenches for two years he is a

  loyal allied cootie and

  he tells me that most of the

  cooties now in the

  allied trenches are pro

  german cooties they have been

  trained by the german high

  command for years before the war

  drilled and redrilled and it is their

  job to bite riflemen

  machine gunners and so forth

  at just the right place at the

  right time to destroy their aim when

  the germans are launching an

  attack every

  morning hindenburg2 ludendorff3 and

  the kaiser4 hold a

  cootie review at headquarters so

  my informant tells me and the

  cooties are glad to get out of

  germany as the rations are

  getting slimmer and slimmer

  there but even the cooties are

  getting scarce in germany now they

  are calling on the

  cootie class of 1920 he says he

  volunteered he says to go into the

  german trenches and bite

  german machine gunners but it was

  only his loyalty that held him to the

  job for so long finally he

  says instead of the cooties

  biting germans the

  germans began to bite cooties and when

  that came about he

  thought it almost time to leave

  it must be an interesting sight to see

  the kaiser on a reviewing

  stand with a million

  cooties drilling by each one trying

  to do the goose step yours

  for fewer and better germans

  JULY 2

  Dialogue among the Plants

  well boss i have

  been looking over your

  garden and my

  thoughts on the

  subject have fallen naturally

  into the form of a little

  dialogue among the

  plants and inhabitants of the

  garden to wit as follows

  garter snake

  how wan on the first of july

  the gardens of april appear

  now the plants that aspired to the sky

  droop and think of the bier

  first onion

  i am a disillusioned onion plant

  so sad so sad am i

  that if one fed me to a maiden ant

  she would curl up and die

  indeterminate vegetable

  in youth i hoped a bean to grow

  but what i am i do not know

  first beet

  i have malaria croup and botts

  second beet

  i have such leprous looking spots

  third beet

  i was a beet of promise as a young beet

  but now i have the mournful feeling

  that neither root nor top nor peeling

  will ever be fit to eat

  garter snake

  ah what a melancholy patch

  toad

  yon egg plant there will never hatch

  indeterminate vegetable

  one paused by me but yesterday

  and spoke of me as hay

  but what i really am i do not know

  cucumber vine

  strange insects walk me to and fro

  pepper plant

  had i been treated with formaldehyde

  that goat that in the dewy eves

  came here to feast upon my leaves

  might not have died

  second onion

  the great splay feet of destiny

  have trodden me have trampled me

  rhubarb

  ah once i hoped to line a pie

  cucumber vine

  will you marauding hen pass by

  or must i die

  indeterminate vegetable

  what thing i am i do not know

  men have no name for me

  garter snake

  i think you are a spinach vine

  toad

  and i should call you eglantine

  sparrow

  perhaps you are a pea

  first bean

  i was a bean

  unto some glad tureen

  i might have given tone

  but a dog
yestereen

  hiding a bone

  took from me all my mundane hope

  indeterminate vegetable

  sometimes i think i am a canteloupe

  second bean

  drooping between two hills of corn

  i am the butt of all mens scorn

  third bean

  ah how i aspired

  in the glad may morn

  fourth bean

  i am so tired so tired

  sparrow

  friend toad from yonder plant keep you away

  i saw a neighbor child but yesterday

  from off its foliage pluck a spray

  and then how he yelled

  and his hand turned black and swelled

  indeterminate vegetable

  perhaps im not a plant at all

  but some strange sort of animal

  first cabbage

  pigeons have riddled me and weasels

  second cabbage

  im spotted as with german measles

  first corn stalk

  woe

  second corn stalk

  woe

  third corn stalk

  woe is me ah woe woe woe

  fourth corn stalk

  even the weeds beside me do not grow

  first turnip

  gott

  second turnip

  gott gott gott

  third turnip

  mildew blight and rot

  fourth turnip

  and smallpox like as not

  indeterminate vegetable

  but cheer brothers cheer

  perhaps before the year

  dwindles to winter drear

  well poison some one here

  i know not what i am

  parsley from siam

  a vegetable ham

  or a long island clam

  but this i know i hate

  my miserable state

  and all human beans

  i hate life and fate

  i hate men and greens

  i hate hens and grass

  i hate garden sass

  who gets me on a plate

  shall learn how i hate

  i hate chards romaine

  children and goats

  old men and young men

  people and oats

  and im full of ptomaine

  who puts me within him

  scorpions had better skin him

  who puts me inside her

  had better eat a spider

  i know not what i be

  alfalfa corn or pea

  but cheer brothers cheer

  before the glad new year

  well poison some one here

  i might give you some advice

  about your garden

  boss but likely you would

  not thank me for it

  so i will only make one

  suggestion to wit if the

  garden were mine i

  would set out another cabbage

  plant in it and then

  give it to the butterflies for

  an aviation ground

  JULY 11

  Ye Instead of The

  “Does Archy ever visit Greenwich Village?” asks R.P. “I found myself in company with a cockroach of a dissipated but still scholarly appearance in one of the cafés over there the other evening. . . .”

  Archy, we regret to say, will frequent the Village. Indeed, we hear that he is planning to open a café of his own to be known as “Ye Crusty Cockroach.”

  “But why the ‘Ye,’ Archy?” we asked him. “Why not merely ‘The’?”

  And Archy, loping six-leggedly to the typewriter, laboriously replied:

  it is going to be one

  of those quaint

  places boss and all those

  quaint places have to

  be ye instead of the

  in a ye place you can

  serve almost anything

  and get away

  with it but in a

  the place you have to

  have a certain amount

  of eats and drinks

  and that increases the

  expense of operation

  enormously i am no

  pig but i do wish to

  make enough money once in

  my life to be

  among the

  excess prophets or the

  excise profits or

  what ever you call

  them

  For our part, we shall never eat goulash in a place that is conducted by Archy—so many of these Greenwich Village artists are always Putting Themselves Into Their Work.

  JULY 23

  One Thing That Makes Crickets So Melancholy

  well boss it may

  surprise you to learn

  that a cricket does not

  sing to be cheerful

  as chas dickens believed1

  he sings because he

  feels so melancholy i

  asked one with whom

  i have become well

  acquainted what his song

  meant and he

  replied

  there are no words

  to go with

  that music but the

  music is sad i

  make that music these

  hot nights because i

  have prickly heat

  and there is nothing else

  to do and another

  cricket said yes

  our song is sad i am

  not troubled by the

  heat but my song is

  melancholy too the words to

  my song said the second

  cricket are as follows

  and he repeated them for

  me to wit

  my love fell into a spiders web

  squeak squeak squeak

  and she screamed with pain as he

  crunched her bones into his

  bloody beak squeak squeak

  squeak yes i said that is

  sad very sad said the

  cricket but not as sad as the

  second stanza which goes

  as follows my love got caught in

  the crack of the door squeak

  squeak squeak and i think with

  grief of the way she died whenever

  i hear it creak

  squeak squeak squeak

  whenever i hear it creak

  squeak squeak squeak

  that brings tears to my eyes

  i said yes he said

  there is nothing you could call

  jolly about the

  second stanza nor the

  third fourth and fifth stanzas

  friend i said

  hurriedly let me hear the

  last stanza

  he looked at me as if

  i had struck him

  and hurried off with

  tears in his gentle eyes

  one thing that

  makes crickets so

  melancholy is that

  they have the artistic

  temperament2

  AUGUST 2

  Sphinx

  what is all this mystery

  about the sphinx

  that has troubled so many

  illustrious men

  no doubt the very same

  thoughts she thinks

  are thought every day

  by some obscure hen

  • • •

  the dachsund

  thinks the giraffe

  is a very

  queer looking

  animal

  AUGUST 6

  Reports of My Exit

  look a here boss this thing

  has gotta stop i

  appeal to you for protection that

  roughneck guy down cellar who

  sent up the dessicated remnant of

  a common chocolate colored water bug

  and put it down by our typewriter

  labeled exit archy is a person wholly

/>   devoid of any real human

  sensibility it

  wasnt even decently preserved frag

  mentary if you get what i mean when

  my time to exit comes again i am

  not going out that way in the cellar of

  a printing shop i think i shall be a

  humming bird next time or maybe i

  shall take on something practical like

  being a pawnbroker that depends a good

  deal on how i am treated in this place

  anyhow i am tired of this kind of

  practical joke the reports of my exit

  as uncle mark twain said are greatly

  exaggerated1

  AUGUST 10

  Glorious Footfulness

  in many places here and

  there

  i think that fate

  is quite unfair

  yon centipede upon

  the floor

  can boast of

  tootsies by the score

  consider my

  distressing fix

  my feet are limited

  to six

  did i a hundred

  feet possess

  would all that glorious

  footfulness

  enable me

  to stagger less

  when i am

  overcome by heat

  or if i had

  a hundred feet

  would i

  careering oer the floor

  stagger

  proportionately more

  well i suppose

  the mind serene

  will not tell

  destiny its mean

  the truly

  philosophic mind

  will use

  such feet as it can find

  and follow calmly

  fast or slow

  the feet it has

  where eer they go

  AUGUST 13