Лучшие рассказы О. Генри = The Best of O. Henry

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 someone through the chatter and smoke whom he knew.

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[32 - Titans – in Greek mythology, giants, the children of Heaven and Earth], 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[33 - Maine – the US state in the north-east of the country], 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.