Читать книгу Modern Essays - Various - Страница 8

Table of Contents

Don Marquis is a real name, not a pseudonym; it is pronounced Markwiss, not Markee. I reprint here two of Mr. Marquis's amiable meditations on the "Almost Perfect State," which have appeared in the column (The Sun Dial) conducted by him for ten years in the New York Sun. According to the traditional motto of sun-dials, Mr. Marquis's horologe usually numbers only the serene hours; but sometimes, when the clear moonlight of his Muse is shining, it casts darker and even more precious shadows of satire and mysticism. His many readers know by this time the depth and reach of his fun and fancy. Marquis is a true philosopher and wit, his humor adorns a rich and mellow gravity. When strongly moved he sometimes utters an epigram that rings like steel leaving the scabbard.

There are many things to be said against American newspapers, but much of the indictment is quashed when one considers that every now and then they develop a writer like Don Marquis. The violent haste, pressure and instancy of newspaper routine, purgatorial to some temperaments, is a genuine stimulus to others—particularly if they are able, as in the case of the columnist, to fall back upon outside contributors in their intervals of pessimism or sloth.

Mr. Marquis's The Old Soak, a post-prohibition portrait of a genial old tippler, is perhaps the most vital bit of American humor since Mr. Dooley—some say since Mark Twain. His Prefaces and his poems will also be considered by the judicious. He was born in Illinois in 1878, and did newspaper work in Philadelphia and Atlanta before coming to the Sun in 1912.