THE FOUR MILLION
by
O. HENRY
Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were
only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth
noticing. But a wiser man has arisen - the census taker - and his
larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out
the field of these little stories of the "Four Million."
Contents:
TOBIN'S PALM
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFÉ
BETWEEN ROUNDS
THE SKYLIGHT ROOM
A SERVICE OF LOVE
THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE
MAN ABOUT TOWN
THE COP AND THE ANTHEM
AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE
MEMOIRS OF A YELLOW DOG
THE LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN
MAMMON AND THE ARCHER
SPRINGTIME À LA CARTE
THE GREEN DOOR
FROM THE CABBY'S SEAT
AN UNFINISHED STORY
THE CALIPH, CUPID AND THE CLOCK
SISTERS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE
THE ROMANCE OF A BUSY BROKER
AFTER TWENTY YEARS
LOST ON DRESS PARADE
BY COURIER
THE FURNISHED ROOM
THE BRIEF DÉBUT OF TILDY
TOBIN'S PALM
Tobin and me, the two of us, went down to Coney one day, for there was
four dollars between us, and Tobin had need of distractions. For there
was Katie Mahorner, his sweetheart, of County Sligo, lost since she
started for America three months before with two hundred dollars, her
own savings, and one hundred dollars from the sale of Tobin's inherited
estate, a fine cottage and pig on the Bog Shannaugh. And since the
letter that Tobin got saying that she had started to come to him not a
bit of news had he heard or seen of Katie Mahorner. Tobin advertised in
the papers, but nothing could be found of the colleen.
So, to Coney me and Tobin went, thinking that a turn at the chutes and
the smell of the popcorn might raise the heart in his bosom. But Tobin
was a hardheaded man, and the sadness stuck in his skin. He ground his
teeth at the crying balloons; he cursed the moving pictures; and, though
he would drink whenever asked, he scorned Punch and Judy, and was for
licking the tintype men as they came.
So I gets him down a side way on a board walk where the attractions were
some less violent. At a little six by eight stall Tobin halts, with a
more human look in his eye.
"'Tis here," says he, "I will be diverted. I'll have the palm of me hand
investigated by the wonderful palmist of the Nile, and see if what is to
be will be."
Tobin was a believer in signs and the unnatural in nature. He possessed
illegal convictions in his mind along the subjects of black cats, lucky
numbers, and the weather predictions in the papers.
We went into the enchanted chicken coop, which was fixed mysterious with
red cloth and pictures of hands with lines crossing 'em like a railroad
centre. The sign over the door says it is Madame Zozo the Egyptian
Palmist. There was a fat woman inside in a red jumper with pothooks and
beasties embroidered upon it. Tobin gives her ten cents and extends one
of his hands. She lifts Tobin's hand, which is own brother to the hoof
of a drayhorse, and examines it to see whether 'tis a stone in the frog
or a cast shoe he has come for.
"Man," says this Madame Zozo, "the line of your fate shows - "
"Tis not me foot at all," says Tobin, interrupting. "Sure, 'tis no
beauty, but ye hold the palm of me hand."
"The line shows," says the Madame, "that ye've not arrived at your
time of life without bad luck. And there's more to come. The mount
of Venus - or is that a stone bruise? - shows that ye've been in love.
There's been trouble in your life on account of your sweetheart."
"'Tis Katie Mahorner she has references with," whispers Tobin to me in a
loud voice to one side.
"I see," says the palmist, "a great deal of sorrow and tribulation with
one whom ye cannot forget. I see the lines of designation point to the
letter K and the letter M in her name."
"Whist!" says Tobin to me, "do ye hear that?"
"Look out," goes on the palmist, "for a dark man and a light woman; for
they'll both bring ye trouble. Ye'll make a voyage upon the water very
soon, and have a financial loss. I see one line that brings good luck.
There's a man coming into your life who will fetch ye good fortune.
Ye'll know him when ye see him by his crooked nose."
"Is his name set down?" asks Tobin. "'Twill be convenient in the way of
greeting when he backs up to dump off the good luck."
"His name," says the palmist, thoughtful looking, "is not spelled out by
the lines, but they indicate 'tis a long one, and the letter 'o' should
be in it. There's no more to tell. Good-evening. Don't block up the
door."
"'Tis wonderful how she knows," says Tobin as we walk to the pier.
As we squeezed through the gates a nigger man sticks his lighted segar
against Tobin's ear, and there is trouble. Tobin hammers his neck, and
the women squeal, and by presence of mind I drag the little man out of
the way before the police comes. Tobin is always in an ugly mood when
enjoying himself.
On the boat going back, when the man calls "Who wants the good-looking
waiter?" Tobin tried to plead guilty, feeling the desire to blow the
foam off a crock of suds, but when he felt in his pocket he found
himself discharged for lack of evidence. Somebody had disturbed his
change during the commotion. So we sat, dry, upon the stools, listening
to the Dagoes fiddling on deck. If anything, Tobin was lower in spirits
and less congenial with his misfortunes than when we started.
On a seat against the railing was a young woman dressed suitable for red
automobiles, with hair the colour of an unsmoked meerschaum. In passing
by, Tobin kicks her foot without intentions, and, being polite to ladies
when in drink, he tries to give his hat a twist while apologising. But
he knocks it off, and the wind carries it overboard.
Tobin came back and sat down, and I began to look out for him, for the
man's adversities were becoming frequent. He was apt, when pushed so
close by hard luck, to kick the best dressed man he could see, and try
to take command of the boat.
Presently Tobin grabs my arm and says, excited: "Jawn," says he, "do ye
know what we're doing? We're taking a voyage upon the water."
"There now," says I; "subdue yeself. The boat'll land in ten minutes
more."
"Look," says he, "at the light lady upon the bench. And have ye
forgotten the nigger man that burned me ear? And isn't the money I had
gone - a dollar sixty-five it was?"
I thought he was no more than summing up his catastrophes so as to get
violent with good excuse, as men will do, and I tried to make him
understand such things was trifles.
"Listen," says Tobin. "Ye've no ear for the gift of prophecy or the
miracles of the inspired. What did the palmist lady tell ye out of me
hand? 'Tis coming true before your eyes. 'Look out,' says she, 'for a
dark man and a light woman; they'll bring ye trouble.' Have ye forgot
the nigger man, though he got some of it back from me fist? Can ye show
me a lighter woman than the blonde lady that was the cause of me hat
falling in the water? And where's the dollar sixty-five I had in me vest
when we left the shooting gallery?"
The way Tobin put it, it did seem to corroborate the art of prediction,
though it looked to me that these accidents could happen to any one at
Coney without the implication of palmistry.
Tobin got up and walked around on deck, looking close at the passengers
out of his little red eyes. I asked him the interpretation of his
movements. Ye never know what Tobin has in his mind until he begins to
carry it out.
"Ye should know," says he, "I'm working out the salvation promised by
the lines in me palm. I'm looking for the crooked-nose man that's to
bring the good luck. 'Tis all that will save us. Jawn, did ye ever see
a straighter-nosed gang of hellions in the days of your life?"
'Twas the nine-thirty boat, and we landed and walked up-town through
Twenty-second Street, Tobin being without his hat.
On a street corner, standing under a gas-light and looking over the
elevated road at the moon, was a man. A long man he was, dressed decent,
with a segar between his teeth, and I saw that his nose made two twists
from bridge to end, like the wriggle of a snake. Tobin saw it at the
same time, and I heard him breathe hard like a horse when you take the
saddle off. He went straight up to the man, and I went with him.
"Good-night to ye," Tobin says to the man. The man takes out his segar
and passes the compliments, sociable.
"Would ye hand us your name," asks Tobin, "and let us look at the size
of it? It may be our duty to become acquainted with ye."
"My name" says the man, polite, "is Friedenhausman - Maximus G.
Friedenhausman."
"'Tis the right length," says Tobin. "Do you spell it with an 'o'
anywhere down the stretch of it?"
"I do not," says the man.
"_Can_ ye spell it with an 'o'?" inquires Tobin, turning anxious.
"If your conscience," says the man with the nose, "is indisposed toward
foreign idioms ye might, to please yourself, smuggle the letter into the
penultimate syllable."
"'Tis well," says Tobin. "Ye're in the presence of Jawn Malone and
Daniel Tobin."
"Tis highly appreciated," says the man, with a bow. "And now since I
cannot conceive that ye would hold a spelling bee upon the street
corner, will ye name some reasonable excuse for being at large?"
"By the two signs," answers Tobin, trying to explain, "which ye display
according to the reading of the Egyptian palmist from the sole of me
hand, ye've been nominated to offset with good luck the lines of trouble
leading to the nigger man and the blonde lady with her feet crossed in
the boat, besides the financial loss of a dollar sixty-five, all so far
fulfilled according to Hoyle."
The man stopped smoking and looked at me.
"Have ye any amendments," he asks, "to offer to that statement, or are
ye one too? I thought by the looks of ye ye might have him in charge."
"None," says I to him, "except that as one horseshoe resembles another
so are ye the picture of good luck as predicted by the hand of me
friend. If not, then the lines of Danny's hand may have been crossed,
I don't know."
"There's two of ye," says the man with the nose, looking up and down
for the sight of a policeman. "I've enjoyed your company immense.
Good-night."
With that he shoves his segar in his mouth and moves across the street,
stepping fast. But Tobin sticks close to one side of him and me at the
other.
"What!" says he, stopping on the opposite sidewalk and pushing back his
hat; "do ye follow me? I tell ye," he says, very loud, "I'm proud to
have met ye. But it is my desire to be rid of ye. I am off to me home."
"Do," says Tobin, leaning against his sleeve. "Do be off to your home.
And I will sit at the door of it till ye come out in the morning. For
the dependence is upon ye to obviate the curse of the nigger man and the
blonde lady and the financial loss of the one-sixty-five."
"'Tis a strange hallucination," says the man, turning to me as a more
reasonable lunatic. "Hadn't ye better get him home?"
"Listen, man," says I to him. "Daniel Tobin is as sensible as he ever
was. Maybe he is a bit deranged on account of having drink enough to
disturb but not enough to settle his wits, but he is no more than
following out the legitimate path of his superstitions and predicaments,
which I will explain to you." With that I relates the facts about
the palmist lady and how the finger of suspicion points to him as an
instrument of good fortune. "Now, understand," I concludes, "my position
in this riot. I am the friend of me friend Tobin, according to me
interpretations. 'Tis easy to be a friend to the prosperous, for it
pays; 'tis not hard to be a friend to the poor, for ye get puffed up by
gratitude and have your picture printed standing in front of a tenement
with a scuttle of coal and an orphan in each hand. But it strains the
art of friendship to be true friend to a born fool. And that's what I'm
doing," says I, "for, in my opinion, there's no fortune to be read from
the palm of me hand that wasn't printed there with the handle of a pick.
And, though ye've got the crookedest nose in New York City, I misdoubt
that all the fortune-tellers doing business could milk good luck from
ye. But the lines of Danny's hand pointed to ye fair, and I'll assist
him to experiment with ye until he's convinced ye're dry."
After that the man turns, sudden, to laughing. He leans against a corner
and laughs considerable. Then he claps me and Tobin on the backs of us
and takes us by an arm apiece.
"'Tis my mistake," says he. "How could I be expecting anything so fine
and wonderful to be turning the corner upon me? I came near being found
unworthy. Hard by," says he, "is a café, snug and suitable for the
entertainment of idiosyncrasies. Let us go there and have drink while we
discuss the unavailability of the categorical."
So saying, he marched me and Tobin to the back room of a saloon, and
ordered the drinks, and laid the money on the table. He looks at me and
Tobin like brothers of his, and we have the segars.
"Ye must know," says the man of destiny, "that me walk in life is
one that is called the literary. I wander abroad be night seeking
idiosyncrasies in the masses and truth in the heavens above. When ye
came upon me I was in contemplation of the elevated road in conjunction
with the chief luminary of night. The rapid transit is poetry and art:
the moon but a tedious, dry body, moving by rote. But these are private
opinions, for, in the business of literature, the conditions are
reversed. 'Tis me hope to be writing a book to explain the strange
things I have discovered in life."
"Ye will put me in a book," says Tobin, disgusted; "will ye put me in a
book?"
"I will not," says the man, "for the covers will not hold ye. Not yet.
The best I can do is to enjoy ye meself, for the time is not ripe for
destroying the limitations of print. Ye would look fantastic in type.
All alone by meself must I drink this cup of joy. But, I thank ye, boys;
I am truly grateful."
"The talk of ye," says Tobin, blowing through his moustache and pounding
the table with his fist, "is an eyesore to me patience. There was good
luck promised out of the crook of your nose, but ye bear fruit like the
bang of a drum. Ye resemble, with your noise of books, the wind blowing
through a crack. Sure, now, I would be thinking the palm of me hand lied
but for the coming true of the nigger man and the blonde lady and - "
"Whist!" says the long man; "would ye be led astray by physiognomy? Me
nose will do what it can within bounds. Let us have these glasses filled
again, for 'tis good to keep idiosyncrasies well moistened, they being
subject to deterioration in a dry moral atmosphere."
So, the man of literature makes good, to my notion, for he pays,
cheerful, for everything, the capital of me and Tobin being exhausted by
prediction. But Tobin is sore, and drinks quiet, with the red showing in
his eye.
By and by we moved out, for 'twas eleven o'clock, and stands a bit upon
the sidewalk. And then the man says he must be going home, and invites
me and Tobin to walk that way. We arrives on a side street two blocks
away where there is a stretch of brick houses with high stoops and iron
fences. The man stops at one of them and looks up at the top windows
which he finds dark.
"'Tis me humble dwelling," says he, "and I begin to perceive by the
signs that me wife has retired to slumber. Therefore I will venture a
bit in the way of hospitality. 'Tis me wish that ye enter the basement
room, where we dine, and partake of a reasonable refreshment. There will
be some fine cold fowl and cheese and a bottle or two of ale. Ye will be
welcome to enter and eat, for I am indebted to ye for diversions."
The appetite and conscience of me and Tobin was congenial to the
proposition, though 'twas sticking hard in Danny's superstitions to
think that a few drinks and a cold lunch should represent the good
fortune promised by the palm of his hand.
"Step down the steps," says the man with the crooked nose, "and I will
enter by the door above and let ye in. I will ask the new girl we have
in the kitchen," says he, "to make ye a pot of coffee to drink before ye
go. 'Tis fine coffee Katie Mahorner makes for a green girl just landed
three months. Step in," says the man, "and I'll send her down to ye."
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it
was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the
grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned
with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.
Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the
next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little
couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection
that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first
stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per
week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that
word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go,
and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring.
Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James
Dillingham Young." The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze
during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid
$30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of
"Dillingham" looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously
of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James
Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called
"Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already
introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag.
She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a
grey fence in a grey backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she
had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving
every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a
week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated.
They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a
happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something
fine and rare and sterling - something just a little bit near to being
worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have
seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may,
by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips,
obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender,
had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her
eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within
twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its
full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which
they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been
his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the
Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have
let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her
Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all
his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his
watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from
envy.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like
a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself
almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and
quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or
two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of
skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered
out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All
Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame,
large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at
the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade. "Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting
the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed
metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else.
There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all
of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in
design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by
meretricious ornamentation - as all good things should do. It was even
worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she that it must be Jim's.
It was like him. Quietness and value - the description applied to both.
Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with
the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious
about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes
looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used
in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence
and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went
to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is
always a tremendous task, dear friends - a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls
that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at
her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second
look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what
could I do - oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of
the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on
the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she
heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she
turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent
prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered:
"Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and
very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two - and to be burdened
with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of
quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in
them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger,
nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments
that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with
that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut
off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without
giving you a present. It'll grow out again - you won't mind, will you?
I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!'
Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice - what a beautiful,
nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not
arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well,
anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you - sold and
gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you.
Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden
serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall
I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For
ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential
object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a
year - what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you
the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not
among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think
there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that
could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package
you may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an
ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to
hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of
all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs - the set of combs, side and back, that Della had
worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise
shell, with jewelled rims - just the shade to wear in the beautiful
vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart
had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of
possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have
adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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."
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;
hand-organs, fountains and pinochle were playing everywhere.
The windows of Mrs. Murphy's boarding-house were open. A group of