The Best of Archy and Mehitabel Read Online Free

scurry about
    i hear of a great many
    tragedies in our midsts
    personally i yearn
    for some dear friend to pass over
    and leave to me
    a boot legacy
    yours for the second coming
    of gambrinus
    archy

a spider and a fly
    i heard a spider
    and a fly arguing
    wait said the fly
    do not eat me
    i serve a great purpose
    in the world
    you will have to
    show me said the spider
    i scurry around
    gutters and sewers
    and garbage cans
    said the fly and gather
    up the germs of
    typhoid influenza
    and pneumonia on my feet
    and wings
    then i carry these germs
    into the households of men
    and give them diseases
    all the people who
    have lived the right
    sort of life recover
    from the diseases
    and the old soaks who
    have weakened their systems
    with liquor and iniquity
    succumb it is my mission
    to help rid the world
    of these wicked persons
    i am a vessel of righteousness
    scattering seeds of justice
    and serving the noblest uses
    it is true said the spider
    that you are more
    useful in a plodding
    material sort of way
    than i am but i do not
    serve the utilitarian deities
    i serve the gods of beauty
    look at the gossamer webs
    i weave they float in the sun
    like filaments of song
    if you get what i mean
    i do not work at anything
    i play all the time
    i am busy with the stuff
    of enchantment and the materials
    of fairyland my works
    transcend utility
    i am the artist
    a creator and a demi god
    it is ridiculous to suppose
    that i should be denied
    the food i need in order
    to continue to create
    beauty i tell you
    plainly mister fly it is all
    damned nonsense for that food
    to rear up on its hind legs
    and say it should not be eaten
    you have convinced me
    said the fly say no more
    and shutting all his eyes
    he prepared himself for dinner
    and yet he said i could
    have made out a case
    for myself too if i had
    had a better line of talk
    of course you could said the spider
    clutching a sirloin from him
    but the end would have been
    just the same if neither of
    us had spoken at all
    boss i am afraid that what
    the spider said is true
    and it gives me to think
    furiously upon the futility
    of literature
    archy

the merry flea
    the high cost of
    living isn t so bad if you
    don t have to pay for it i met
    a flea the other day who
    was grinning all over
    himself why so merry why so
    merry little bolshevik i asked him
    i have just come from a swell
    dog show he said i have
    been lunching off a dog that was
    worth at least one hundred
    dollars a pound you should be
    ashamed to brag about it i said with so
    many insects and humans on
    short rations in the world today the
    public be damned he said i
    take my own where i find it those are
    bold words i told him i am a bold
    person he said and bold words are
    fitting for me it was
    only last thursday that i marched
    bravely into the zoo
    and bit a lion what did he do i asked
    he lay there and took it said
    the flea what else could he do he knew i
    had his number and it was
    little use to struggle some day i said
    even you will be conquered terrible as
    you are who will do it he
    said the mastodons are all dead and i
    am not afraid of any mere
    elephant i asked him how about a microbe and
    he turned pale as he thought it
    over there is always some
    little thing that is too
    big for us every
    goliath has his david and so on ad finitum
    but what said the flea is the
    terror of the smallest microbe of all
    he i said is afraid of a vacuum what is
    there in a vacuum to make one afraid
    said the flea there is nothing in it
    i said and that is what makes one
    afraid to contemplate it a person
    can t think of a place with nothing at
    all in it without going nutty and if he
    tries to think that nothing is
    something after all he gets nuttier you are
    too subtle for me said the
    flea i never took much stock in being
    scared of hypodermic propositions or
    hypothetical injections i am
    going to have dinner off a
    man eating tiger if a vacuum gets
    me i will try and send you word
    before the worst comes to
    the worst