A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFE

At midnight the cafe 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. We

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 company, the ladies

dressed in demi-state toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus

of taste, economy, opulence or art; the sedulous and largess-loving

_garcons_, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the

composers; the _melange_ of talk and laughter--and, if you will, the

Wuerzburger 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 longitude. 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'hote_ grape fruit. He spoke disrespectfully of the equator, he

skipped from continent to continent, 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 Lapland. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at

Kealaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas post-oak swamp,

let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then

whirled you into the society of Viennese archdukes. 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 a 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 found at last the one true cosmopolite since Adam,

and I listened to his worldwide 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 overpowered 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 cafes 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 cafes

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 watermelon 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

Richmond, 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 Wuerzburgers 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 whiskey,

Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, 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 Southerners, 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 invariably 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 tooralloo-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 around. 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 terrestrial,

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 introduced to the King of England

hand that monarch, without batting his eyes, the information that

his grand-aunt 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 he saw

some one through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left with

the would-be periwinkle, who was reduced to Wuerzburger 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 cafe. 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 "Teasing."

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 resisting.

I called McCarthy, one of the French _garcons_, 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."

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 734