ABSTRACT
Don Marquis, most of whose humor grew out of the American urban experience, was born on July 29, 1878, in the small Midwestern town of Walnut, Illinois. His parents, Dr. James Stewart and Virginia Whitmore Marquis, were advocates of a strict Calvinism, a faith whose hell-fire severity their religiously undogmatic son was quick to repudiate. To the exasperation of his father, Marquis's early years lacked direction. He read extensively, dabbled in poetry, attended Knox College for a few months, and skipped aimlessly from job to job before deciding on a career in the newspaper business. He wrote first for a small paper in the Walnut area, an experience that introduced him to the creative possibilities of column-writing; among other material, his columns included apocryphal tales of Abraham Lincoln, some of which, according to Marquis himself, were accepted into the historical record.
