the poem called "A Gentleman of Fifty Soliloquizes," which bids affection stand a little farther off:
Then, should it change, no heart will bleed or burn.
Give me your wits. I want no heart of thine.
You'll ask too much of life-blood in return.
We foiled self-seekers, we shattered fragments of personality, have devised ways to conceal our frustration and to keep impertinent curiosity from ascertaining whether the inner chamber of our lives contains a shrine or a tomb, or whether it is merely vacant. As for Don Marquis, he walks habitually in a defensive cloud of the humorous butterflies that his brain gives birth to; behind his whimsy moods and his satirical laughter he is, you will find if you pry into the matter, reticent—for a lyric poet, very reticent—about himself.
The only legitimate way to get at these reticent authors is to sit down before their complete works and read them straight through. It is infinitely better sport than cross-word puzzles, I conjecture, never having tried the latter. It is like big game hunting, when you get a soul at bay. When you have done that, you are in a position to tell the author all sorts of things about himself which he doesn't know—some of which may be true. I have tried this method with Don Marquis, and shall report my discoveries presently. But first let us consider the immediate occasion for subjecting a humorist to treatment so cruel and so unusual.
The occasion is this: Don Marquis has just proved by the severest of tests that he is a poet of very nearly the rarest sort—a dramatic poet. He has published
