Hermione and her little group of “Serious Thinkers” have attained the dignity of book publication, and now stand on the shelf beside “Danny’s Own Story” and “The Cruise of the Jasper B.”  This satire on the azure-pedalled coteries of Washington Square has perhaps received more publicity than any other of Marquis’s writings, but of all Don’s drolleries I reserve my chief affection for Archy.  The cockroach, endowed by some freak of transmigration with the shining soul of a vers libre poet, is a thoroughly Marquisian 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 larboard mate only the patent log clicking off the knots said