A Cosmopolite in a Cafe
(By O. Henry)
Read Ebook | Size | 25 MB (25,084 KB) |
|---|---|
| Format | |
| Downloaded | 640 times |
| Last checked | 12 Hour ago! |
| Author | O. Henry |
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
sp”
