I forget how he managed to arrange the carriage returns for separate lines as the months and years roll by archy increases the scope of his narrative and of his own micro cosmos so that his writings form a satirical sort of social commentary prominently featuring the global misadventures of his friend mehitabel the alley cat in this way marquis was able to use his column to subtly comment on issues of the day as well as to entertainįor more information on a great humanist go to He couldn’t arrange a way to work the shift key simultaneously thus the lower case text He did this for each letter and by the end of the evening he was thoroughly worn out The text on the sheet was entirely in lower case without punctuation the reason being that the only way archy could make the typewriter key strike the paper was to dive off the platen head- first onto the key whereupon the momentum of his dive forced the key down with enough pressure to make an imprint on the paper He asked marquis to always leave a blank sheet in the typewriter each night when he left the office he also thanked marquis for leaving food scraps on the desk for him every night The text was an introduction of the writer a cockroach who called himself archyĪrchy said that he had always wanted to be a poet and thanked marquis for making it possible for him to live his dream One morning he arrived at his desk to find a composition on the sheet of paper he had left in his typewriter the night before Don marquis was a new york newspaper columnist and highly popular social critic during the early 1900s