sian whimsy. I make no apology for
quoting this prince of blattidae at some length. Many a commuter,
opening his evening paper on the train, looks first of all to see if
Archy is in the Dial. I love Archy because there seems to me something
thoroughly racial and native and American about him. Can you imagine
him, for instance, in _Punch_? His author has never told us which one of
the vers libre poets it is whose soul has emigrated into Archy, but I
feel sure it is not Ezra Pound or any of the expatriated eccentrics who
lisp in odd numbers in the King's Road, Chelsea. Could it be Amy Lowell?
Perhaps it should be explained that Archy's carelessness as to
punctuation and capitals is not mere ostentation, but arises from the
fact that he is not strong enough to work the shift key of his
typewriter. Ingenious readers of the Sun Dial have suggested many
devices to make this possible, but none that seem feasible to the roach
himself.

The Argument: Archy, the vers libre cockroach, overhears a person with
whiskers and dressed in the uniform of a butler in the British Navy, ask
a German waiter if the pork pie is built. Ja, Ja, replies the waiter.
Archy's suspicions are awakened, and he climbs into the pork pie through
an air hole, and prepares his soul for parlous times. The naval butler
takes the pie on board a launch, and Archy, watching through one of the
portholes of the pastry, sees that they are picked up by a British
cruiser "an inch or two outside the three-mile line." (This was in
neutral days, remember.) Archy continues the narrative in lower case
agate:

it is cuthbert with the pork pie the captain has been longing for
said a voice and on every side rang shouts of the pie the pie the
captains pie has come at last and a salute of nineteen guns was
fired the pie was carried at once to the captains mess room where
the captain a grizzled veteran sat with knife and fork in hand and
serviette tucked under his chin i knew cried the captain that if
there was a pork pie in america my faithful cuthbert find it for me
the butler bowed and all the ships officers pulled up their chairs
to the table with a rasping sound you may serve it honest cuthbert
said the captain impatiently and the butler broke a hole in the top
crust he touched a hidden mechanism for immediately something right
under me began to go tick tock tick tock tick tock what is that
noise captain said the larboar