FullReads

This is the outline of my life in its relation to the times in which I live. For the benefit of those whose curiosity extends to more particular details, I add a careful pen-picture of myself.

It seems more modest, somehow, to put it in the third person:

Height, 5 feet 101/2 inches; hair, dove-coloured; scar on little finger of left hand; has assured carriage, walking boldly into good hotels and mixing with patrons on terms of equality; weight, 200 pounds; face slightly asymmetrical, but not definitely criminal in type; loathes Japanese art, but likes beefsteak and onions; wears No. 8 shoe; fond of Francis Thompson’s poems; inside seam of trousers, 32 inches; imitates cats, dogs and barnyard animals for the amusement of young children; eyetooth in right side of upper jaw missing; has always been careful to keep thumb prints from possession of police; chest measurement, 42 inches, varying with respiration; sometimes wears glasses, but usually operates undisguised; dislikes the works of Rabindranath Tagore; corn on little toe of right foot; superstitious, especially with regard to psychic phenomena; eyes, blue; does not use drugs nor read his verses to women’s clubs; ruddy complexion; no photograph in possession of police; garrulous and argumentative; prominent cheek bones; avoids Bohemian society, so-called, and has never been in a thieves’ kitchen, a broker’s office nor a class of short-story writing; wears 17-inch collar; waist measurement none of your business; favourite disease, hypochondria; prefers the society of painters, actors, writers, architects, preachers, sculptors, publishers, editors, musicians, among whom he often succeeds in insinuating himself, avoiding association with crooks and reformers as much as possible; walks with rapid gait; mark of old fracture on right shin; cuffs on trousers, and coat cut loose, with plenty of room under the arm pits; two hip pockets; dislikes Rochefort cheese, “Tom Jones,” Wordsworth’s poetry, absinthe cocktails, most musical comedy, public banquets, physical exercise, Billy Sunday, steam heat, toy dogs, poets who wear their souls outside, organized charity, magazine covers, and the gas company; prominent callouses on two fingers of right hand prevent him being expert pistol shot; belt straps on trousers; long upper lip; clean shaven; shaggy eyebrows; affects soft hats; smile, one-sided; no gold fillings in teeth; has served six years of indeterminate sentence in Brooklyn, with no attempt to escape, but is reported to have friends outside; voice, husky; scar above the forehead concealed by hair; commonly wears plain gold ring on little finger of left hand; dislikes prunes, tramp poets and imitations of Kipling; trousers cut loose over hips and seat; would likely come along quietly if arrested.

I would fail utterly in this rambling anatomy if I did not insist that Don Marquis regards his column not merely as a soapslide but rather as a cudgelling ground for sham and hypocrisy. He has something of the quick Stevensonian instinct for the moral issue, and the Devil not infrequently winces about the time the noon edition of the Evening Sun comes from the press. There is no man quicker to bonnet a fallacy or drop the acid just where it will disinfect. For instance, this comment on some bolshevictory in Russia:

A kind word was recently seen, on one of
the principal streets of Petrograd,
attempting to butter a parsnip.

For the plain man who shies at surplice and stole, the Sun Dial is a very real pulpit, whence, amid excellent banter, he hears much that is purging and cathartic in a high degree. The laughter of fat men is a ringing noble music, and Don Marquis, like Friar Tuck, deals texts and fisticuffs impartially. What an archbishop of Canterbury he would have made! He is a burly and bonny dominie, and his congregation rarely miss the point of the sermon. We cannot close better than by quoting part of his Colyumist’s Prayer in which he admits us somewhere near the pulse of the machine:

I pray Thee, make my colyum read,
And give me thus my daily bread.
Endow me, if Thou grant me wit,
Likewise with sense to mellow it.
Save me from feeling so much hate
My food will not assimilate;
Open mine eyes that I may see
Thy world with more of charity,
And lesson me in good intents
And make me friend of innocence …
Make me (sometimes at least) discreet;
Help me to hide my self-conceit,
And give me courage now and then
To be as dull as are most men.
And give me readers quick to see
When I am satirizing Me….
Grant that my virtues may atone
For some small vices of mine own.

And it is thoroughly characteristic of Don Marquis that he follows his prayer with this comment:

People, when they pray, usually pray not for what they really want–and intend to have if they can get it–but for what they think the Creator wants them to want. We made a certain attempt to be sincere in the above verses; but even at that no doubt a lot of affectation crept in.