Worlds of fine thinking lie buried in that vast abyss, never to be disentombed or restored to human admiration.  Like the sea, it has swallowed treasures without end, that no diving-bell will bring up again.

Greatly as we cherish the Sun Dial, we are jealous of it for sapping all its author’s time and calories.  No writer in America has greater of more meaty, stalwart gifts.  Don, we cry, spend less time stoking that furnace out in Port Washington, and more on your novels!

There is no more convincing proof of the success of the Sun Dial than the roster of its contributors.  Some of the most beautiful lyrics of the past few years have been printed there (I think particularly of two or three by Padraic Colum).  In this ephemeral column of a daily newspaper some of the rarest singers and keenest wits of the time have been glad to exhibit their wares, without pay of course.  It would be impossible to give a complete list, but among them are William Rose Benet, Clinton Scollard, Edith M. Thomas, Benjamin De Casseres, Gelett Burgess, Georgia Pangborn, Charles Hanson Towne, Clement Wood.

But the tragedy of the colyumist’s task is that the better he does it the harder it becomes.  People simply will not leave him alone.  All day long they drop into his office, or call him up on the phone in the hope of getting into the column.  Poor Don! he has become an institution down on Nassau Street:  whatever hour of the day you call, you will find his queue there chivvying him.  He is too gracious to throw them out:  his only expedient is to take them over to the gin cathedral across the street and buy them a drink.  Lately the poor wretch has had to write his Dial out in the pampas of Long Island, bringing it in with him in the afternoon, in order to get it done undisturbed.  How many times I have sworn never to bother him again!  And yet, when one is passing in that neighbourhood, the temptation is irresistible....  I dare say Ben Jonson had the same trouble.  Of course someone ought to endow Don and set him permanently at the head of a chophouse table, presiding over a kind of Mermaid coterie of robust wits.  He is a master of the tavernacular.

He is a versatile cove.  Philosopher, satirist, burlesquer, poet, critic, and novelist.  Perhaps the three critics in this country whose praise is best worth having, and least easy to win, would be Marquis, Strunsky, and O.W.  Firkins.  And I think that the three leading poets male in this country to-day are Marquis, William Rose Benet, and (perhaps) Vachel Lindsay.  Of course Don Marquis has an immense advantage over Will Benet in his stoutness.  Will had to feed up on honey and candied apricocks and mares’ milk for months before they would admit him to the army.