The Four Million | Page 9

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 spo--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 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 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 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."

BETWEEN ROUNDS
The May moon shone bright upon the private boarding-house of Mrs.
Murphy. By reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will be
discovered upon which its rays also fell. Spring was in its heydey, with
hay fever soon to follow. The parks were green with new leaves and
buyers for the Western and Southern trade. Flowers and summer-resort
agents were blowing; the air and answers to Lawson were growing
milder; handorgans, fountains and pinochle were playing everywhere.
The windows of Mrs. Murphy's boarding-house were open. A group of
boarders were seated on the high stoop upon round, flat mats like
German pancakes.
In one of the second-floor front windows Mrs. McCaskey awaited her
husband. Supper was cooling on the table. Its heat