Page:The Four Million (1906).djvu/43

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A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFÉ
 

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 bands 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 too-ralloo-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 goatherder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle

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