Cosmopolis

“ The main dining-room of the Hotel Cosmopolis is a decorous place. The lighting is artistically dim, and the genuine old tapestries on the walls seem, with their mediaeval calm, to discourage any essay in the riotous. Soft-footed waiters shimmer to and fro over thick, expensive carpets to the music of an orchestra which abstains wholly from the noisy modernity of jazz. To Archie, who during the past few days had been privileged to hear Miss Huskisson rehearsing, the place had a sort of brooding quiet, like the ocean just before the arrival of a cyclone. ”

“ The diners, unused to this sort of thing at the Cosmopolis, were trying to adjust their faculties to cope with the outburst. Waiters stood transfixed, frozen, in attitudes of service. In the momentary lull between verse and refrain Archie could hear the deep breathing of Mr. Brewster. Involuntarily he turned to gaze at him once more, as refugees from Pompeii may have turned to gaze upon Vesuvius; and, as he did so, he caught sight of Mr. Connolly, and paused in astonishment. ”

“ Not the Automat today, I think, what! Now that I’m a jolly old star and all that sort of thing, it can’t be done. Directly this is over we’ll roll round to the Cosmopolis. A slight celebration is indicated, what? ”

“ AS the days went by and he settled down at the Hotel Cosmopolis, Archie, looking about him and revising earlier judgments, was inclined to think that of all his immediate circle he most admired Parker, the lean, grave valet of Mr. Daniel Brewster. Here was a man who, living in the closest contact with one of the most difficult persons in New York, contrived all the while to maintain an unbowed head, and, as far as one could gather from appearances, a tolerably cheerful disposition. A great man, judged him by what standard you pleased. ”

“ What could be simpler than to toddle down one flight of stairs and in an easy and debonair manner ask the chappie’s permission to use his telephone? And what could be simpler, once he was at the ’phone, than to get in touch with somebody at the Cosmopolis who would send down a few trousers and what not in a kit bag. It was a priceless solution, thought Archie, as he made his way downstairs. Not even embarrassing, he meant to say. This chappie, living in a place like this, wouldn’t bat an eyelid at the spectacle of a fellow trickling about the place in a bathing suit. ”

“ All the employes of the Hotel Cosmopolis were alert. It was one of the things on which Mr. Daniel Brewster, the proprietor, insisted. And as he was always wandering about the lobby of the hotel keeping a personal eye on affairs, it was never safe to relax.
“I want to see the manager.”
“Is there anything I could do, sir?”
Archie looked at him doubtfully.
“Well, as a matter of fact, my dear old desk-clerk,” he said, “I want to kick up a fearful row, and it hardly seems fair to lug you into it. Why you, I mean to say? The blighter whose head I want on a charger is the bally manager.” ”

“ Banner, established on December 17, 1889, by Thomas E. Ashe. Independent.
BUCODA, THURSTON COUNTY
Enterprise, established in November, 1889, by R. F. Pattison and J. W . Julian and its publication continued until 1894 when it suspended and the plant was moved to Cosmopolis. (J. C. Rathbun, History of Thurston County, page 118.) No files have been located.
CAMAS, CLARKE COUNTY
See entry under La Camas.
CASTLEROCK, COWLITZ COUNTY
Cowlitz Advocate, established on July 10, 1886, by E. H. Flagg. Republican. ”

“ You, who know better than any one the motley world of cosmopolites, understand why I have confined myself to painting here only a fragment of it. That world, indeed, does not exist, it can have neither defined customs nor a general character. It is composed of exceptions and of singularities. We are so naturally creatures of custom, our continual mobility has such a need of gravitating around one fixed axis, that motives of a personal order alone can determine us upon an habitual and voluntary exile from our native land. ”

“ On the four outsides of the earth rise four perpendicular walls, which surround it, and join together at the top in a vault, the heavens forming the cupola of this singular edifice.
The world, according to Cosmas, was therefore a large oblong box, and it was divided into two parts; the first, the abode of men, reaches from the earth to the firmament, above which the stars accomplish their revolutions; there dwell the angels, who cannot go any higher. The second reaches upwards from the firmament to the upper vault, which crowns and terminates the world. ”

“ But could we behold the Kosmos as it is beheld by its Creator, we should perchance find the whole encyclopedia of our science resting upon a few great, but simple laws; we should see that the whole universe, in all its infinite complication, is the fulfilment of perhaps a single simple thought of the Divine Mind, and that it is this unity pervading the diversity which makes it the Kosmos, Beauty. ”

“ Sphinx, or these astronomers of Chaldea?" asked Professor Abel Able.
"I believe," Cosmo replied, "that the knowledge originated here, beneath us, and that it was afterward conveyed to the Egyptians, who embodied it in their great symbolical god."
"Are we to understand," demanded Professor Jeremiah Moses, "that this figure was all that you saw on the breast of the statue, and that you simply inferred that the ring represented a nebula?"
"Not at all," Cosmo replied. "The principal representation was that of a world overwhelmed with a flood, and of a nebula descending upon it." ”

“ In about half an hour after Cosmo's speech the bell, with its hardy explorers safely inclosed within, was lowered away, and a minute later hundreds were craning their necks over the rails to watch the shining globe engulf itself swiftly in the sapphire depths. It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the descent was begun, and for a long time, so remarkable was the transparency of the water, they could see the bell sinking, and becoming smaller until it resembled a blue pearl. Sometimes a metallic flash shot from its polished sides like a gleam of violet lightning. ”

“ Cosmo was now in a state of extravagant delight. Most men have a secret treasure somewhere. The miser has his golden hoard; the virtuoso his pet ring; the student his rare book; the poet his favourite haunt; the lover his secret drawer; but Cosmo had a mirror with a lovely lady in it. And now that he knew by the skeleton, that she was affected by the things around her, he had a new object in life: he would turn the bare chamber in the mirror into a room such as no lady need disdain to call her own. ”

“ The prompting of intelligent curiosity, the thirst for some plausible hypothesis to explain the Kosmos and its generation, the belief that a basis or point of departure might be found in the Kosmos itself, apart from those mythical personifications which dwelt both in the popular mind and in the poetical Theogonies, the mental effort required to select some known agency and to connect it by a chain of reasoning with the result — all this is a new phenomenon in the history of the human mind. ”

“ These texts alone teach us that we yet know but little of the power and wisdom of the Sovereign of the universe, whose spirit fills unlimited space; which space is undoubtedly coeval and coextensive with eternity; studded with millions on millions of worlds, each moving in its appropriate Sphere, like our own Planet. But a still greater wonder is the thousands and millions of blazing Comets, even in the Solar System, (Dick, vol. viii: p. 339,) seemingly sailing with a roving commission, sweeping their burning trails all over the perceptible universe of God, each moving in its proper Orbit! ”

“ And these changes he sees to be brought about in part by the place of the globe in space, and its relation to other celestial bodies, and in part by the very shape, form, and character of the surface and configurations themselves. Thus to the geographer the phantasmagoria of visible things presents itself as a drama, a great cosmic drama in which the part allotted to the human species is both insignificant and predetermined in all essential respects. The operations of man on the planet are, from this point of view, limited and conditioned by inexorable cosmic forces. ”

“ Many quadrillions of miles away, so far that your most powerful telescopes have not yet caught a glimmer, rests in its serene grandeur a star that we call Cosmos, because it is the centre of this universe. Its diameter is as great as the diameter of Cassandra's orbit, and notwithstanding its terrific heat, its specific gravity, on account of the irresistible pressure at and near the centre, is as great as that of the planet Mercury. ”

“ The oldest rectangular map of the world is contained in a most valuable work written by Cosmas, an Alexandrian monk, surnamed Indicopleustes, after returning from a voyage to India (535 A.D.) , and entitled Christian Topography. According to Cosmas (fig. 6) the inhabited earth has the shape of an oblong rectangle surrounded by an ocean which breaks in in four great gulfs—the Roman or Mediterranean, the Arabian, Persian and Caspian Sea. Beyond this ocean lies another world, which was occupied by man before the Deluge, and within which Cosmas placed the Terrestrial Paradise. ”

“ Like all science, philosophy, and religion, cosmography was at first a superstition. Walled within narrow limits, as we have seen, by imaginary frost and fire, shaken from fear of heaven above and hell beneath, there is little wonder that the ancients dared not venture far from home; nor that, when men began to explore parts unknown, there should appear that romance of geography so fascinating to the Greek mind, that halo thrown by the dimness of time and distance over strange seas and lands. ”

“ The uranological portion of the Cosmos is more simple than the telluric; the impossibility of ascertaining the diversity of matter simplifies the study of the mechanism of the heavens. Origin of the word 'Cosmos', its signification of adornment and order of the universe. The 'existing' can not be absolutely separated in our contemplation of nature from the 'future'. History of the world and description of the world — p. 26-73. Attempts to embrace the multiplicity of the phenomena of the Cosmos in the unity of thought and under the form of a purely rational combination. ”

“ An hypothesis which accounts for the formation of Mars or Venus upon one theory, and that of the earth upon another, would never be countenanced by science. The solar system was the result of law, of unalterable and immutable law, working for manifestation. It could not produce a solid globe in the one instance and a hollow sphere in the other. No—all the planets are hollow—the earth is a mere bubble floating in space. And now I want to ask if the evidence I had accumulated was not equal to that which fired Columbus? ”

“ According to Cosmas the earth is a rectangular plane, covered by the vaulted roof of the firmament, above which lies heaven. In the centre of the plane is the inhabited earth, surrounded by ocean, beyond which lies the paradise of Adam. The sun revolves round a conical mountain to the north—round the summit in summer, round the base in winter, which accounts for the difference in the length of the day. Cosmas is supposed by some to have been a Nestorian. ”

“ In a universe of relativity, every planet is the centre of its own system, as every man is the centre of his own world, and the Astrologer who studies the action of the planets on this earth and its inhabitants, rightly regards the latter as the passive centre of such action. As the fortunes of a country centre in its Ruler, so those of the individual centre in himself.
A further argument urged against the Science is that the discovery of the planets Neptune and Uranus must vitiate conclusions drawn from an incomplete cosmical system. ”

“ But what kind of a craft have you got out there?"
"I'm Cosmo Versál."
"Then that's the Ark we've heard about! 'Pon honor, I should have recognized you, for I've seen your picture often enough. You've come to take us off, I suppose?"
"Certainly," replied Cosmo. "How many are there?"
"All that you see here; about a hundred, I should say. No doubt there are others on the mountains round. There must have been a thousand of us when we started, but most of them perished, overcome by the downpour, or swept away by the torrents. ”

“ For there is one only which is natural. Now, if there be many Kosmi, they must be alike in their nature, and must be composed of the same bodies, having the same nature and powers — fire, earth, and the two intermediate elements: for, if the bodies here are not the same as those in other Kosmi — if the same names are given in an equivocal sense and do not connote the same specific attributes — the name Kosmos must be equivocal also, and there cannot be many true or real Kosmi, in the same sense. ”

“ His dream spun its fragile net about the planets of the Solar System, about their moons, about every single foot of planetary ground where men had gone to build and create a second homeland—the mines of Mercury and the farms of Venus, the pleasure-lands of Mars and the mighty domed cities on the moons of Jupiter, the moons of Saturn and the great, cold laboratories of Pluto. ”

“ In the Timæus of Plato we find Psychology, in a very large and comprehensive sense, identified with Kosmology. The Kosmos, a scheme of rotatory spheres, has both a soul and a body: of the two, the soul is the prior, grander, and predominant, though both of them are constructed or put together by the Divine Architect or Demiurgus. The kosmical soul, rooted at the centre, and stretched from thence through and around the whole, is endued with self-movement, and with the power of initiating movement in the kosmical body ”