ally got to have something to cuss around and boss, so's to keep himself from finding out he don't amount to nothing. Leastways, most men is like that. And Hank, he didn't amount to much, and he kind of knowed it, way down deep in his inmost gizzards, and it were a comfort to him to have me around.
In 1915 Don Marquis made the first collection of his serious poems, under the title "Dreams and Dust." In 1916 he uttered a farcical Stocktonian yarn, "The Cruise of the Jasper B.," which relates the adventures of a romantic journalist attempting to sail his schooner, scow or canal boat—it isn't quite clear which—from her moorings on a brick pier in Long Island. In the same year appeared "Hermione and her Little Group of Serious Thinkers," asking themselves at bedtime many heart-searching questions. In 1919 a volume of "Prefaces"—thirty-two of them, introducing A Check Book, A Cook Book. The Works of Billy Sunday, etc. In 1921 appeared the first records of "The Old Soak"; also a notable collection of short stories, "Carter and Other People," and a volume of humorous verse, "Noah an' Jonah an' Cap'n John Smith." Next year, 1922, a second collection of serious verse, "Poems and Portraits," in which Don Marquis takes the war seriously, and adds thirty-three satires with teeth. In 1922, "The Revolt of the Oyster," containing some capital stories of dogs and boys and the ripe tale of "The Saddest Man"; also "Sonnets to a Red-Haired Lady." In 1924, "The Old Soak's History of the World," "The Dark Hours," and, with Christopher Morley, "Pandora Lifts the Lid."
There are some things among these fourteen volumes
