Don Marquis
                    by
            Benjamin DeCasseres

    Copyright 1938 by Benjamin DeCasseres

                 Dedicated
                    to
                The Friends
                    of
                Don Marquis



Speed, I bid you, speed the earth
  Onward with a shout of mirth!
                       --Don Marquis



                     DON MARQUIS

                         I

   There was a man in the land of America whose name
was Don, and that man was upright and eschewed evil.

   Now there was a day when the Sons of Light came to
present themselves before the Great Impresario of 
Spectacles, and Satan came also among them.

   And the Great Impresario said until Satan:

        "Hast thou considered Don, that there is none like
him, that he is an upright man, one that escheweth evil,
one that is beloved of all men and who giveth to his last?"

   Satan then answered:

      "What wouldst thou with him, Sire?"

   And the Great Impresario said unto Satan:
      "Strip him of all he hat in the manner of Job".

   And Satan then was puzzled, for he knew no sin that
Don had committed or why he should thus be in ill-favor
with the Great Impresario.

   And so he asked:

   "But why must this be, Sir?  Don is impregnable against
all my wiles.  Even I, the Supreme Tempter, honor him,
knowing that he is sublime in his nature."

   Then the Great Impresario, turning his back on Satan,
said:

   "Do as I bid thee!  This man hath in him the unpard-
onable sin:  a sense of humor touching things sacred and 
divine.  Go and do!"

   And so that man Don, in the land of America, who
was upright and eschewed evil and who was beloved of 
all men and who gave to his last, had his son taken from
him, and then his wife, and then his daughter, and then 
he was stricken blind, and then he had his second wife 
taken from him, and then he was paralyzed, and then his 
speech was taken from him, and then his mind was dark- 
need, and then he was paralyzed again--and thus, utterly 
helpless and stricken, his properties and moneys were 
drained from him, and he lay in great agony and weak- 
ness until the Great Impresario and his man Satan, see- 
ing that no further evil could be done unto Don, who was 
upright, eschewed evil, who was beloved by all men and 
who gave to his last, sent his soul into the Valley of the 
Shadow.


                                II

   Again there was a day when the Sons of Light came
to present themselves before the Great Impresario of 
Spectacles, and Satan came also among them, and with 
him came Don.

   And Satan said unto the Great Impresario:

   "Behold, Sire, I have brought before thee the man Don
who was upright, who eschewed evil and who was 
beloved of all men and who gave to his last and who has 
been stripped of all things."

   And then Don spake unto the Great Impresario and
said:

   "Sire, why didst thou do this things to me?  I wronged
no man in my lifetime and my heart was heavy with love 
and pity for all who suffered and my hand was ever ready 
to give.

   "But thou, laying on me one great disaster after an-
other as of one who had offended thee overmuch, didst 
take from me my children, my wives, my sight, my mind, 
my limbs, my goods and nailed me to a mountain of tor- 
ture and suffering as was done to Prometheus.  Where- 
fore?"


                      III

   And the Great Impresario of Spectacles of a sudden 
great gray on his throne, and Satan shriveled up like a 
man of a thousand thousand years, and the heavens be- 
yond and above and around were slowly flooded as with 
a silver light.

   And rising in the light, filling the heavens to the re-
motest angles of space, advancing in a gradually closing 
semicircle over the Great Impresario of Spectacles, came 
the Angels of Laughter, and they filled the heavens with 
more numbers than the stars.

   And as with one voice the heavens, the stars and the
spaces were shaken with the Chant of the Angeles of 
Laughter, and they then shouted:

   "Thou, Sire, hath stripped Don, who was upright, who
eschewed evil, who was beloved of all men and who gave 
unto his last, of all but one thing, his sense of Humor, 
and that clothes him now in triple brass.

   "This man is saved, and is even now become one of us,
for Laughter is the highest form of Thought and Love.

   "Thy kingdoms of Good and Evil, O Great Impres-
ario of Spectacles, are at an end for this earth-freed 
spirit, for a greater thing hath been found by Don Mar-
quis, the Kingdom of Cosmic Mirth, the Laughter that 
topples gods from their thrones, and against that nought 
shall prevail! 

   And Don the well-beloved, Don the sublime, Don the
Poet, Don the Wit, Don who was stripped of all things in 
the manner of Job was lifted high into the Light by the 
healing Angels of Laughter, and his soul was carried into 
the Valhalla of Triumphant Mirth, where he shall reign 
as a shining spiritual presence while there still lives on 
Earth a single man or woman who knew DON MARQUIS.

                    --end--

-- Benjamin DeCessares was a writer, author, poet, 
journalist, contemporary, and a friend of Don Marquis.