The Four Million
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
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 went into Mrs.
McCaskey.
At nine Mr. McCaskey came. He carried his coat on his arm and his pipe
in his teeth; and he apologised for disturbing the boarders on the
steps as he selected spots of stone between them on which to set his
size 9, width Ds.
As he opened the door of his room he received a surprise. Instead of
the usual stove-lid or potato-masher for him to dodge, came only words.
Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May moon had softened the breast
of his spouse.
“I heard ye,” came the oral substitutes for kitchenware. “Ye can
apollygise to riff-raff of the streets for settin’ yer unhandy feet on
the tails of their frocks, but ye’d walk on the neck of yer wife the
length of a clothes-line without so much as a ‘Kiss me fut,’ and I’m
sure it’s that long from rubberin’ out the windy for ye and the
victuals cold such as there’s money to buy after drinkin’ up yer wages
at Gallegher’s every Saturday evenin’, and the gas man here twice
to-day for his.”
“Woman!” said Mr. McCaskey, dashing his coat and hat upon a chair, “the
noise of ye is an insult to me appetite. When ye run down politeness ye
take the mortar from between the bricks of the foundations of society.
’Tis no more than exercisin’ the acrimony of a gentleman when ye ask
the dissent of ladies blockin’ the way for steppin’ between them. Will
ye bring the pig’s face of ye out of the windy and see to the food?”
Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went to the stove. There was something
in her manner that warned Mr. McCaskey. When the corners of her mouth
went down suddenly like a barometer it usually foretold a fall of
crockery and tinware.
“Pig’s face, is it?” said Mrs. McCaskey, and hurled a stewpan full of
bacon and turnips at her lord.
Mr. McCaskey was no novice at repartee. He knew what should follow the
entrée. On the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with
shamrocks. He retorted with this, and drew the appropriate return of a
bread pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately
thrown by her husband struck Mrs. McCaskey below one eye. When she
replied with a well-aimed coffee-pot full of a hot, black,
semi-fragrant liquid the battle, according to courses, should have
ended.
But Mr. McCaskey was no 50-cent _table d’hôter_. Let cheap Bohemians
consider coffee the end, if they would. Let them make that _faux pas_.
He was foxier still. Finger-bowls were not beyond the compass of his
experience. They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy; but their
equivalent was at hand. Triumphantly he sent the granite-ware wash
basin at the head of his matrimonial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in
time. She reached for a flatiron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she
hoped to bring the gastronomical duel to a close. But a loud, wailing
scream downstairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort
of involuntary armistice.
On the sidewalk at the corner of the house Policeman Cleary was
standing with one ear upturned, listening to the crash of household
utensils.
“’Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missis at it again,” meditated the
policeman. “I wonder shall I go up and stop the row. I will not.
Married folks they are; and few pleasures they have. ’Twill not last
long. Sure, they’ll have to borrow more dishes to keep it up with.”
And just then came the loud scream below-stairs, betokening fear or
dire extremity. “’Tis probably the cat,” said Policeman Cleary, and
walked hastily in the other direction.
The boarders on the steps were fluttered. Mr. Toomey, an insurance
solicitor by birth and an investigator by profession, went inside to
analyse the scream. He returned with the news that Mrs. Murphy’s little
boy, Mike, was lost. Following the messenger, out bounced Mrs.
Murphy—two hundred pounds in tears and hysterics, clutching the air and
howling to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds of freckles and
mischief. Bathos, truly; but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of Miss
Purdy, millinery, and their hands came together in sympathy. The two
old maids, Misses Walsh, who complained every day about the noise in
the halls, inquired immediately if anybody had looked behind the clock.
Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and
buttoned his coat. “The little one lost?” he exclaimed. “I will scour
the city.” His wife never allowed him out after dark. But now she said:
“Go, Ludovic!” in a baritone voice. “Whoever can look upon that
mother’s grief without springing to her relief has a heart of stone.”
“Give me some thirty or—sixty cents, my love,” said the Major. “Lost
children sometimes stray far. I may need carfares.”
Old man Denny, hall room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest
step, trying to read a paper by the street lamp, turned over a page to
follow up the article about the carpenters’ strike. Mrs. Murphy
shrieked to the moon: “Oh, ar-r-Mike, f’r Gawd’s sake, where is me
little bit av a boy?”
“When’d ye see him last?” asked old man Denny, with one eye on the
report of the Building Trades League.
“Oh,” wailed Mrs. Murphy, “’twas yisterday, or maybe four hours ago! I
dunno. But it’s lost he is, me little boy Mike. He was playin’ on the
sidewalk only this mornin’—or was it Wednesday? I’m that busy with
work, ’tis hard to keep up with dates. But I’ve looked the house over
from top to cellar, and it’s gone he is. Oh, for the love av Hiven—”
Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its
revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that no pulse of pity
beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely forests and
deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the lobster is found a
delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a different simile would have
been wiser. Still, nobody should take offence. We would call no one a
lobster without good and sufficient claws.
No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the
straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the
ways are so steep and strange.
Major Griggs hurried down to the corner, and up the avenue into Billy’s
place. “Gimme a rye-high,” he said to the servitor. “Haven’t seen a
bow-legged, dirty-faced little devil of a six-year-old lost kid around
here anywhere, have you?”
Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy’s hand on the steps. “Think of that dear
little babe,” said Miss Purdy, “lost from his mother’s side—perhaps
already fallen beneath the iron hoofs of galloping steeds—oh, isn’t it
dreadful?”
“Ain’t that right?” agreed Mr. Toomey, squeezing her hand. “Say I start
out and help look for um!”
“Perhaps,” said Miss Purdy, “you should. But, oh, Mr. Toomey, you are
so dashing—so reckless—suppose in your enthusiasm some accident should
befall you, then what—”
Old man Denny read on about the arbitration agreement, with one finger
on the lines.
In the second floor front Mr. and Mrs. McCaskey came to the window to
recover their second wind. Mr. McCaskey was scooping turnips out of his
vest with a crooked forefinger, and his lady was wiping an eye that the
salt of the roast pork had not benefited. They heard the outcry below,
and thrust their heads out of the window.
“’Tis little Mike is lost,” said Mrs. McCaskey, in a hushed voice, “the
beautiful, little, trouble-making angel of a gossoon!”
“The bit of a boy mislaid?” said Mr. McCaskey, leaning out of the
window. “Why, now, that’s bad enough, entirely. The childer, they be
different. If ’twas a woman I’d be willin’, for they leave peace behind
’em when they go.”
Disregarding the thrust, Mrs. McCaskey caught her husband’s arm.
“Jawn,” she said, sentimentally, “Missis Murphy’s little bye is lost.
’Tis a great city for losing little boys. Six years old he was. Jawn,
’tis the same age our little bye would have been if we had had one six
years ago.”
“We never did,” said Mr. McCaskey, lingering with the fact.