eyebrows; affects soft hats; smile, one-sided; no gold fillings in teeth; has served six years of indeterminate sentence in Brooklyn, with no attempt to escape, but is reported to have friends outside; voice, husky; scar above the forehead concealed by hair; commonly wears plain gold ring on little finger of left hand; dislikes prunes, tramp poets and imitations of Kipling; trousers cut loose over hips and seat; would likely come along quietly if arrested.

I would fail utterly in this rambling anatomy if I did not insist that Don Marquis regards his column not merely as a soapslide but rather as a cudgelling ground for sham and hypocrisy.  He has something of the quick Stevensonian instinct for the moral issue, and the Devil not infrequently winces about the time the noon edition of the Evening Sun comes from the press.  There is no man quicker to bonnet a fallacy or drop the acid just where it will disinfect.  For instance, this comment on some bolshevictory in Russia: 

    A kind word was recently seen, on one of the principal streets of
    Petrograd, attempting to butter a parsnip.

For the plain man who shies at surplice and stole, the Sun Dial is a very real pulpit, whence, amid excellent banter, he hears much that is purging and cathartic in a high degree.  The laughter of fat men is a ringing noble music, and Don Marquis, like Friar Tuck, deals texts and fisticuffs impartially.  What an archbishop of Canterbury he would have made!  He is a burly and bonny dominie, and his congregation rarely miss the point of the sermon.  We cannot close better than by quoting part of his Colyumist’s Prayer in which he admits us somewhere near the pulse of the machine: 

    I pray Thee, make my colyum read,
    And give me thus my daily bread. 
    Endow me, if Thou grant me wit,
    Likewise with sense to mellow it. 
    Save me from feeling so much hate
    My food will not assimilate;
    Open mine eyes that I may see
    Thy world with more of charity,
    And lesson me in good intents
    And make me friend of innocence ... 
    Make me (sometimes at least) discreet;
    Help me to hide my self-conceit,
    And give me courage now and then
    To be as dull as are most men. 
    And give me readers quick to see
    When I am satirizing Me.... 
    Grant that my virtues may atone
    For some small vices of mine own.

And it is thoroughly characteristic of Don Marquis that he follows his prayer with this comment: 

People, when they pray, usually pray not for what they really want—­and intend to have if they can get it—­but for what they think the Creator wants them to want.  We made a certain attempt to be sincere in the above verses; but even at that no doubt a lot of affectation crept in.

THE ART OF WALKING

    Away with the stupid adage about a man being as old as his arteries! 
    He is as old as his calves—­his garteries....