A cosmopolite in a Café
A cosmopolite in a Café
AT 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 excited. We hear of them, and we see
foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travelers 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 teste, economy, opulence or
art, the sedulous and largess – loving garcons,
the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the mélange of talk and laughter and, if you
will, the Wurzburger in tall glass cones that bend to your lips as 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’hôte grape fruit. He spoke disrespectfully of
the equator, he skipped form 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 society of Viennese
archdukes. Anon he would be telling you 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 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 form 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 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. You 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 Wurzburgers
to the waiter; the dark-haired young man acknowledged hid 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 form-’ 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 form? 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 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 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 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 form the North,
or the South, or the old manor – house in the dale, or Euclid Avenue,
Cleveland, or Pike, or Fairfax Country, 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 to be 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.
Someday 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 wondering 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 Southern on
being introduced 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 tide down to anything that isn’t
8000 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 Wurzburger 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 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 form by the
other guy.’
‘Why,’ said I,
bewildered, ‘that man is a citizen of the world – a cosmopolite. He – ’
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