"Excuse me," said he, "but that's a question I never like to hear asked.
What does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by
his post-office address? Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey,
Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't
written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver
dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees,
cold-blooded Southerners, narrow-minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who
were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to 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 band 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 tooralloo-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