blish 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 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