THE ALMOST PERFECT STATE _By_ DON MARQUIS Don Marquis is a real name, not a pseudonym; it is pronounced _Markwiss_, not _Markee_. I reprint here two of Mr. Marquis's amiable meditations on the "Almost Perfect State," which have appeared in the column (_The Sun Dial_) conducted by him for ten years in the New York Sun. According to the traditional motto of sun-dials, Mr. Marquis's horologe usually numbers only the serene hours; but sometimes, when the clear moonlight of his Muse is shining, it casts darker and even more precious shadows of satire and mysticism. His many readers know by this time the depth and reach of his fun and fancy. Marquis is a true philosopher and wit, his humor adorns a rich and mellow gravity. When strongly moved he sometimes utters an epigram that rings like steel leaving the scabbard. There are many things to be said against American newspapers, but much of the indictment is quashed when one considers that every now and then they develop a writer like Don Marquis. The violent haste, pressure and instancy of newspaper routine, purgatorial to some temperaments, is a genuine stimulus to others--particularly if they are able, as in the case of the columnist, to fall back upon outside contributors in their intervals of pessimism or sloth. Mr. Marquis's _The Old Soak_, a post-prohibition portrait of a genial old tippler, is perhaps the most vital bit of American humor since _Mr. Dooley_--some say since Mark Twain. His _Prefaces_ and his poems will also be considered by the judicious. He was born in Illinois in 1878, and did newspaper work in Philadelphia and Atlanta before coming to the _Sun_ in 1912. I No matter how nearly perfect an Almost Perfect State may be, it is not nearly enough perfect unless the individuals who compose it can, somewhere between death and birth, have a perfectly corking time for a few years. The most wonderful governmental system in the world does not attract us, as a system; we are after a system that scarcely knows it is a system; the great thing is to have the largest number of individuals as happy as may be, for a little while at least, some time before they die.