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            A Cosmopolite in a Café

 

A T MIDNIGHT THE CAFÉ was crowded. By some chance the little

table at which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two

vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the

influx of patrons.

And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad, for

I held a theory that since Adam no true citizen of the world has

existed. W e hear of them, and we see foreign labels on much

luggage, but we find travellers instead of cosmopolites.

I invoke your consideration of the scene - the marble-topped

tables, the range of leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay com­

pany, the ladies dressed in demi-state toilets, speaking in an

exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or art, the

sedulous and largess-loving garçons, the music wisely catering to all

with its raids upon the composers; the mélange of talk and laughter

- and, if you will, the Würzburger in the tall glass cones that bend

to your lips as a ripe cherry sways on its branch to the beak of a

robber jay. I was told by a sculptor from Mauch Chunk that the

scene was truly Parisian.

My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglan, and he will

be heard from next summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a

new 'attraction' there, he informed me, offering kingly diversion.

And then his conversation rang along parallels of latitude and lon­

gitude. He took the great, round world in his hand, so to speak,

familiarly, contemptuously, and it seemed no larger than the seed

of a Maraschino cherry in a table-d'hôte grape fruit. He spoke dis­

respectfully of the equator, he skipped from continent to conti­

nent, he derided the zones, he mopped up the high seas with his

napkin. With a wave of his hand he would speak of a certain

bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would have you on skis in Lap­

land. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at

Kealaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas postoak swamp, let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his

Idaho ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese arch­

dukes. Anon he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a

Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila cured it in Buenos

Ayres with a hot infusion of the chuchula weed. You would have

 

addressed the letter to 'E. Rushmore Coglan, Esq., the Earth,

Solar System, the Universe,' and have mailed it, feeling confident

that it would be delivered to him.

I was sure that I had at last found the one true cosmopolite since

Adam, and I listened to his world-wide discourse fearful lest I

should discover in it the local note of the mere globe-trotter. But

his opinions never fluttered or drooped; he was as impartial to

cities, countries and continents as the winds or gravitation.

And as E. Rushmore Coglan prattled of this little planet I

thought with glee of a great almost-cosmopolite who wrote for the

whole world and dedicated himself to Bombay. In a poem he has

to say that there is pride and rivalry between the cities of the

earth, and that 'the men that breed from them, they traffic up and

down, but cling to their cities' hem as a child to the mother's

gown.' And whenever they walk 'by roaring streets unknown' they

remember their native city 'most faithful, foolish, fond; making

her mere-breathed name their bond upon their bond.' And my

glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I

had found a man not made from dust; one who had no narrow

boasts of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all,

would brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and the

inhabitants of the Moon.

Expression on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rushmore Coglan by the third corner to our table. While Coglan was

describing to me the topography along the Siberian Railway the

orchestra glided into a medley. The concluding air was 'Dixie,'

and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were almost over­

powered by a great clapping of hands from almost every table.

It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be

witnessed every evening in numerous cafés in the City of New

York. Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to account

for it. Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town

hie themselves to cafés at nightfall. This applause of the 'rebel' air

in a Northern city does puzzle a little; but it is not insolvable. The

war with Spain, many years' generous mint and water-melon

crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and

the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens

who compose the North Carolina Society, have made the South

rather a 'fad' in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that

your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman's in Rich­

mond, Va. Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to work now - the

war, you know.

 

When 'Dixie' was being played a dark-haired young man

sprang up from somewhere with a Mosby guerrilla yell and waved

frantically his soft-brimmed hat. Then he strayed through the

smoke, dropped into the vacant chair at our table and pulled out

cigarettes.

The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. One of

us mentioned three Würzburgers to the waiter; the dark-haired

young man acknowledged his inclusion in the order by a smile and

a nod. I hastened to ask him a question because I wanted to try out

a theory I had.

'Would you mind telling me,' I began, 'whether you are from - '

The fist of E. Rushmore Coglan banged the table and I was

jarred into silence.

'Excuse me,' said he, 'but that's a question I never like to hear

asked. What does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge

a man by his post-office address? Why, I've seen Kentuckians who

hated whisky, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahon­

tas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't

wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams,

funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southern­

ers, narrow-minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too

busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed

grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man

and don't handicap him with the label of any section.'

'Pardon me,' I said, 'but my curiosity was not altogether an idle

one. I know the South, and when the band plays "Dixie" I like to

observe. I have formed the belief that the man who applauds that

air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invari­

ably a native of either Secaucus, N.J., or the district between

Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about

to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman when

you interrupted with your own - larger theory, I must confess.'

And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and it

became evident that his mind also moved along its own set of

grooves.

'I should like to be a periwinkle,' said he, mysteriously, 'on the

top of a valley, and sing too-ralloo-ralloo.'

This was clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coglan.

'I've been around the world twelve times,' said he. 'I know an

Esquimau in Upernavik who sends to Cincinnati for his neckties,

and I saw a goat-herder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle

Creek breakfast-food puzzle competition. I pay rent on a room in

 

Cairo, Egypt, and another in Yokohama all the year round. I've

got slippers waiting for me in a tea-house in Shanghai, and I don't

have to tell 'em how to cook my eggs in Rio de Janeiro or Seattle.

It's a mighty little old world. What's the use of bragging about

being from the North, or the South, or the old manor-house in

the dale, or Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, or Pike's Peak, or Fairfax

County, Va., or Hooligan's Flats or any place? It'll be a better

world when we quit being fools about some mildewed town or ten

acres of swampland just because we happened to be born there.'

'You seem to be a genuine cosmopolite,' I said admiringly. 'But

it also seems that you would decry patriotism.'

'A relic of the stone age,' declared Coglan warmly. 'We are all

brothers - Chinamen, Englishmen, Zulus, Patagonians, and the

people in the bend of the Kaw River. Some day all this petty pride

in one's city or state or section or country will be wiped out, and

we'll all be citizens of the world, as we ought to be.'

'But while you are wandering in foreign lands,' I persisted, 'do

not your thoughts revert to some spot - some dear and - '

'Nary a spot,' interrupted E. R. Coglan flippantly. 'The terres­

trial, globular, planetary hunk of matter, slightly flattened at the

poles, and known as the Earth, is my abode. I've met a good many

object-bound citizens of this country abroad. I've seen men from

Chicago sit in a gondola in Venice on a moonlight night and brag

about their drainage canal. I've seen a Southerner on being intro­

duced to the King of England hand that monarch, without batting

his eyes, the information that his grandaunt on his mother's side

was related by marriage to the Perkinses, of Charleston. I knew a

New Yorker who was kidnapped for ransom by some Afghanistan

bandits. His people sent over the money and he came back to

Kabul with the agent. "Afghanistan?" the natives said to him

through an interpreter. "Well, not so slow, do you think?" "Oh, I

don't know," says he, and he begins to tell them about a cab-driver

at Sixth Avenue and Broadway. Those ideas don't suit me. I'm not

tied down to anything that isn't 8,000 miles in diameter. Just put

me down as E. Rushmore Coglan, citizen of the terrestrial sphere.'

My cosmopolite made a large adieu and left me, for he thought

that he saw someone through the chatter and smoke whom he

knew. So I was left with the would-be periwinkle, who was reduced

to Würzburger without further ability to voice his aspirations to

perch, melodious, upon the summit of a valley.

I sat reflecting upon my evident cosmopolite and wondering

how the poet had managed to miss him. He was my discovery and

 

I believed in him. How was it? 'The men that breed from them

they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities' hem as a child to

the mother's gown.'

Not so E. Rushmore Coglan. With the whole world for his My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and

conflict in another part of the café. I saw above the heads of the

seated patrons E. Rushmore Coglan and a stranger to me engaged

in terrific battle. They fought between the tables like Titans, and

glasses crashed, and men caught their hats up and were knocked

down, and a brunette screamed, and a blonde began to sing 'Teas­

ing.'

My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the

Earth when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their

famous flying wedge formation and bore them outside, still resist­

ing.

I called McCarthy, one of the French garçons, and asked him the

cause of the conflict.

'The man with the red tie' (that was my cosmopolite), said he,

'got hot on account of things said about the bum sidewalks and

water supply of the place he come from by the other guy.'

'Why,' said I, bewildered, 'that man is a citizen of the world - a

cosmopolite. He - '

'Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said,' continued

McCarthy, 'and he wouldn't stand for no knockin' the place.'