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 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 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 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 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 postoak 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 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES
7 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 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 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 Richmond, Va. Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to work now -
the war, you know. 8 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 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 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 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 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 9 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 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 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 10 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED
STORIES 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 '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 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.'