The Four Million | Page 7

to her bosom, and at length she was able to look
up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him
eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash
with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to
look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I
want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands
under the back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a
while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the
money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who
brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving
Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones,
possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And
here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two
foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other
the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of
these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the
wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

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
Wurzburger 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