Don Marquis - was he awesome or what?

I recently found a copy of The Almost Perfect State, a collection of newspaper columns from the mid-1910's, explaining his vision of a near-utopia. Among other things he proposes a massive reduction in population, argues for rule by artists, and continually rages against the evils of beans.

PARAPHRASE

A little legume is a dangerous thing.

Of course there's also Archy and Mehitabel - http://www.donmarquis.com/archy/ - which is wonderful and has Herriman illustrations and is reasonably easy to find. However I had no idea this book existed before yesterday and I feel compelled to share its wisdom.

" During the last ten years we shall indulge ourself in many things that we have been forced by circumstances to forego. We have always been compelled, and we shall be compelled for many years to come, to be prudent, cautious, staid, sober, conservative, industrious, respectful of established institutions, a model citizen. We have not liked it, but we have been unable to escape it. Our mind, our logical faculties, our observation, inform us that the conservatives have the right side of the argument in all human affairs. But the people whom we really prefer as associates, though we do not approve their ideas, are the rebels, the radicals, the wastrels, the vicious, the poets, the Bolshevists, the idealists, the nuts, the Lucifers, the agreeable good-for-nothings, the sentimentalists, the prophets, the freaks. We have never dared to know any of them, far less become intimate with them.

Between the years of ninety-two and a hundred and two, however, we shall be the ribald, useless, drunken outcast person we have always wished to be. We shall have a long white beard and long white hair; we shall not walk at all, but recline in a wheel chair and bellow for alcoholic beverages; in the winter we shall sit before the fire with our feet in a bucket of hot water, with a decanter of corn whiskey near at hand, and write ribald songs against organized society; strapped to one arm of our chair will be a forty-five caliber revolver, and we shall shoot out the lights when we want to go to sleep, instead of turning them off; when we want air we shall throw a silver candlestick through the front window and be damned to it; we shall address public meetings to which we have been invited because of our wisdom in a vein of jocund malice."

INQUIRY

Is George Bernard Shaw addicted to beans?

"A WICKED LIE

The falsest and most iniquitous saying of the last two centuries is Sterne's sentimentalism, that "the Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb."

The shorn lamb, if he gets out in the winter weather, freezes. Face the fact. Chew on it till your teeth splinter. Get it into your system. It is the character of the creation. It is bitter. Suffer over it, and crucify yourself upon it, and question your gods and doubt them because of it, as Job did. In the end, when you find you cannot escape it, even though you be the lamb, something of the edge and roughness and bitterness of the icy wind will become a part of you, and you will get a kind of auto-ironic mirth out of it as you become more the wind and less the lamb; the gods are both tenderness and toughness; what they visit upon you is to teach you to be like them; they are, you are, both the wind and the lamb, and they are you and you are they."

I realize this is like those old ILM threads where William Wiggins enthuses over some new Lil Scrappy song and no one responds, but hey, I like those threads.

(not part of the book)

A DESK MOTTO

In Summer, Spring, and also Fall
I do not like
to work at all
In Winter,
as you may have guessed
My favorite indoor sport
is Rest

this is the song of mehitabel
of mehitabel the alley cat
as i wrote you before boss
mehitabel is a believer
in the pythagorean
theory of the transmigration
of the soul and she claims
that formerly her spirit
was incarnated in the body
of cleopatra
that was a long time ago
and one must not be
surprised if mehitabel
has forgotten some of her
more regal manners

i have had my ups and downs
but wotthehell wotthehell
yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
and today i herd with bums
but wotthehell wotthehell
i wake the world from sleep
as i caper and sing and leap
when i sing my wild free tune
wotthehell wotthehell
under the blear eyed moon
i am pelted with cast off shoon
but wotthehell wotthehell

do you think that i would change
my present freedom to range
for a castle or moated grange
wotthehell wotthehell
cage me and i d go frantic
my life is so romantic
capricious and corybantic
and i m toujours gai toujours gai

i know that i am bound
for a journey down the sound
in the midst of a refuse mound
but wotthehell wotthehell
oh i should worry and fret
death and i will coquette
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai

i once was an innocent kit
wotthehell wotthehell
with a ribbon my neck to fit
and bells tied onto it
o wotthehell wotthehell
but a maltese cat came by
with a come hither look in his eye
and a song that soared to the sky
and wotthehell wotthehell
and i followed adown the street
the pad of his rhythmical feet
o permit me again to repeat
wotthehell wotthehell

my youth i shall never forget
but there s nothing i really regret
wotthehell wotthehell
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai

the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve gotto
wotthehell wotthehell
and i end with my favorite motto
toujours gai toujours gai

boss sometimes i think
that our friend mehitabel
is a trifle too gay

I am also a Don Marquis fan, for the record

Damn this stuff looks great. I assume Casuistry is also a fan.

I read A&M religiously in high school.

https://i.imgur.com/Ig2MxNK.jpg