Archy's Life of Mehitabel [antikvár]

Introduction Archy the Cockroach made his initial appearance in my office a good many years ago, in fact about the same time that free verse began to commend itself to the multitudes because it looked as if it would be so easy to write. There was a period which many persons still more or less alive may remember when you could not scratch a taxi-driver, an insurance agent, or a newspaper reporter without finding a free-verse poet under the skin. Archy claimed that he was a victim of transmigration; that he had been a vers libre bard, and that for his sins of omission and commission his soul had been sentenced to serve an indeterminate sentence in the body of a cockroach. Mehitabel the Cat, who appeared about the same time, made a similar claim; before she was Mehitabel, she said, she had been Cleopatra and various other lively ladies. Archy writes without punctuation because he is forced to use his head to butt the keys of the typewriter one at a time, and he is not able to reach the shift keys of the machine in order to make punctuation marks or capital letters. Mehitabel does not use the typewriting machine at all, so Archy is forced to be her reporter. 7