Chapter V: Part 5

"The mistake that Mr. Wilson made in number six on the program was that he took it for granted when the Allies welcomed Russland into the Society of Free Nations, Russia would behave like a new member should ought to behave, instead of which Russia started right in by giving a bad check for her initiation fees and first annual dues," Morris said. "She has also got out of the United States railroad supplies, munitions, and food, y'understand, and after giving bonds in payment, Abe, she turns right round and refuses to make good on 'em and at the same time practically says, 'What are you going to do about it?' and all this is right on top of Mr. Wilson saying, 'The treatment accorded to Russia by her sister nations,' y'understand, 'in the months to come,' _verstehst du mich_, 'will be the acid test of their good-will,' understand me, 'and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.'"

"Well, I'll tell you," Abe remarked, "the English which I learned it at night school, Mawruss, was more or less a popular-price line of language, and when Mr. Wilson comes across every once in a while with one of them exclusive models in the way of speeches, using principally high-grade words in imported designs, understand me, I ain't no more equipped to handle his stuff than a manufacturer of fly-papers is to make flying-machines, _but_ as an ignorant business man, Mawruss, which you would be the last person to admit that I ain't, Mawruss, it seems to me that the acid test of our good-will is not going to be the way we treat Russland, but the way Russia treats us; and, in fact, Mawruss, Russia already poured a little acid on us long before this. But now when she renigs on her bonds and practically gives us a whole bathful of acid, Mawruss, for my part the treatment needn't go on for months to come. I am satisfied with the acid test so far as it's gone _this_ month, Mawruss, because it don't make no difference what kind of acid you use, Mawruss, a dead beat is a dead beat, understand me, and for a dead beat nobody has got any sympathy--either intelligent or unselfish, or unintelligent and selfish. Am I right or wrong, Mawruss?"

"I wouldn't worry my head over that if I was you, Abe," Morris said, "because, as you said just now, Russland will attend to that number on the program for herself. But what is troubling me is number one, which provides that peace shall be made openly, and at the same time does away with the possibility that some afternoon when you and me gets out of here, after making up our minds that the war would last for ten years yet, we would buy a Sporting Extra with Final Wall Street Complete, and see the whole front page filled up mit the word PEACE in letters a foot high, understand me, which it has always been in the back of my head that the next time Colonel House would slip off to Europe no one would know anything about till the treaty of peace comes back signed 'Woodrow Wilson, per E.M.H.' But if the first number on the program goes through as planned, Abe, and we have open covenants of peace openly arrived at, y'understand, why, then, that will be something else again."

"You bet your life it would be something else again," Abe agreed, fervently, "and what is more, Mawruss, not only would them covenants of peace be open, but they would remain open for a long time, because there's a whole lot of Senators, Congressmen, ex-Senators, ex-Congressmen, and ex-Presidents which is laying for the opportunity when peace is proposed, so that they can discuss the peace terms with one another, openly, frankly, and in the public view, as Mr. Wilson would say. Yes, Mawruss, there's several political orators in and out of Congress which has got the word 'traitor' in their system and has got to get it out again in reference to somebody--preferably a member of the Cabinet--before peace negotiations is closed, and there is also such indigestible words like 'pusillanimous,' which gives certain ex-Presidents a feeling of fullness around the throat, and a couple of Senators will need time to find out just what the other Senators wants to do about them peace terms so that they can differ with them; and looking at it one way and another, Mawruss, if Senator Wadsworth and Senator McKellar thinks it is taking a long time to get ready for war, they should wait till we get ready for peace, Mawruss, and if they don't want to be afterward holding investigations as to why the throat specialists wasn't mobilized on time, Mawruss, they should start right in and mobilize the throat specialists, and also it wouldn't do any harm to find out the available stock of cough-drops is in the hands of the dealers, so that the lung power of the nation can go forth to holler for peace equipped to the last menthol lozenge."

"In a way, that ain't no joke, neither, Abe," Morris said. "There is people that Mr. Wilson didn't include in his war program which is going to do their utmost to horn in on his peace program at the very best spot in the bill. Take Mr. Roosevelt, and his friends will no doubt insist that Mr. Wilson does a supper turn while Mr. Roosevelt goes on somewheres around nine forty-five, because to-day yet they're talking about making the Presidency of the United States a coalition affair, in which Wilson, Roosevelt, and Taft would be equal partners with the same drawing account and everything."

"And where does Mr. Wilson get off in this coalition business?" Abe inquired. "Ain't two undivided one-thirds of the Presidency of the United States for the unexpired portion of his term worth nothing to Mr. Wilson, even at short rates, Mawruss?"

"Well," Morris replied, "I suppose Roosevelt and Taft would throw in their experience as Presidents."

"Say!" Abe exclaimed. "There ain't a week goes by nowadays but what Mr. Wilson gets more experience as President than Taft and Roosevelt did in both their terms put together, so I don't think you need waste no more breath about it, Mawruss. When the people last time elected a President of the United States they chose Mr. Wilson as an individual, not as a co-partner, and you could take it from me, Mawruss, it don't make no difference whether it would be a peace program or a war program which Mr. Wilson is fixing up, the name of the chief performer on it was settled by the people a year ago last November!"

XVIII

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON THE NEW NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, after Mr. Garfield had announced the five-day shut-down, "one of the hardest things that a patriotic sitson is called on to do nowadays is to have faith in those fellers which is running the Fuel Commission, the Food Commission, and all the other commissions that they ain't such big fools as you would think for."

"Well, you don't think this here Garfield would close up the country for five days unless it would be necessary, ain't it?" Morris Perlmutter retorted.

"Certainly I don't," Abe agreed. "But what is troubling me is that he ain't said as yet for why it is necessary, Mawruss."

"Maybe he 'ain't figured it out yet," Morris suggested. "And even if he didn't, Abe, it stands to reason that if the country don't burn no coal for five days, at the end of five days they would still got the coal they didn't burn, provided they had got any coal at all to start with."

"But as I understand it, Mawruss," Abe said, "not burning coal 'ain't got nothing at all to do mit Mr. Garfield's order that we shouldn't burn no coal. It seems from what ex-President Taft says and also from what a professor by the name of Jinks _oder_ Jenks says, Mawruss, Mr. Garfield done it because the people 'ain't begun to realize that we are at war, Mawruss."

"You mean to say that _again_ the people don't begin to realize we are at war?" Morris exclaimed. "It couldn't be possible, Abe. Here we have had two Liberty Loan campaigns, a military draft which took in every little cross-road village in the country, a war-tax bill that hits everybody and everything, and people like Mr. Taft and Professor Jinks saying day in and day out that the people 'ain't begun to realize we are at war, y'understand, and yet you try to tell me that the people has slipped right back into not beginning to realize we are at war, Abe."

"I don't try to tell you nothing," Abe said. "For my part I think it's time that somebody put them wise, Mawruss."

"What do you mean--put them wise?" Morris demanded. "The people knows that--"

"Who is saying anything about the people?" Abe interrupted. "I am talking about Mr. Taft and this here Professor Jinks, Mawruss. Them fellers has got ideas from spring and summer designs of nineteen seventeen. What we are looking for from the big men of the country is new ideas for the late summer of nineteen eighteen and fall and winter seasons of nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen, and this here people-'ain't-begun-to-realize talk was already a back-number line of conversation in June, nineteen seventeen."

"But what them fellers is driving into, Abe," Morris observed, "is that it's going to help the war along if the people of America should be made to suffer along with the people of France and England. They figure that it ain't going to do us Americans a bit of harm to know how them Frenchers feel, _nebich_, with the Germans holding on to their coal-supply, Abe."

"Well, we could get the same effect by going round in athaletic underwear and no overcoats, Mawruss," Abe retorted, "so if that's what Mr. Taft claims Mr. Garfield shut off the coal for, Mawruss, he is beating around the wrong bushes."

"And he ain't the only one, neither, Abe," Morris said. "From the way other people is talking, Abe, you would think that in order to get into this war _right_, y'understand, we should ought to go to work and blow up a few dozen American cathedrals, send up airyoplanes over New York, and drop a couple gross bombs on the business section of the town, poison the water-supply, cut off the milk for the babies, and do everything else that them miserable Germans did to France and England, not to say also Russia, y'understand. This will cause us to become so sore, understand me, that everybody of fighting age will want to fight, and the rest of us will be willing to work in the munition-factories and spend all our time and money to end a war where American cathedrals is being blown up, airyoplanes is bombing New York, and babies is suffering for want of milk, Abe."

"You mean that Professor Jinks is willing to have us believe that Mr. Garfield is shutting off the coal, not because it's necessary, but because it's the equivalence of us bombing our own cities and making ourselves feel sore?" Abe asked. "Mr. Garfield?"

"Ordinary people which ain't professors and ex-Presidents might figure that way," Morris continued, "but it seems that the theory is we are going to feel sore at Germany, Abe."

"Well," Abe commented, "I am perfectly willing to feel sore at Germany for the things she has done in this war, Mawruss, and I am so sore at Germany, anyway, that I am also willing to feel sore at her for the things which she 'ain't done also, Mawruss, but so far as Mr. Garfield is concerned, y'understand, I prefer to think that he's a hard-working feller which could once in a while make a mistake, understand me, and that if he cuts off the coal, it's on account he thinks it's necessary to save the coal. Because if I thought the way Professor Jinks thinks, Mawruss, and I should meet Mr. Garfield face to face somewheres, understand me, the least they could send me up for would be using rotten language tending to cause a breach of the peace, y'understand."

"Sure I know, Abe," Morris agreed. "But the chances is that Mr. Taft and Professor Jinks may have a private idee that when Mr. Garfield shut down on the coal he could of saved coal in some other way, and so in order that he shouldn't get stumped for explanations afterward, y'understand, they are taking this way of giving him what they think is a good pointer in that line, understand me, because if you read the papers this morning, Abe, there must be thousands of prominent sitsons which claims to be patriotic, y'understand, and from what them fellers said about Mr. Garfield, Abe, it was plain to me that the stuff they was holding back from saying about him was pretty near giving them apoplexy, y'understand."

"Well, when it comes to cussing out the Fuel Administrator, Mawruss," Abe said, "them prominent sitsons wouldn't have nothing on the unprominent sitsons which is going to lose five days' pay now and one day's pay a week for ten weeks later. Yes, Mawruss, what them poor people is going to call Mr. Garfield during the five days they will lay off is going to pretty near warm up their cold homes even if it ain't going to provide food for their families, Mawruss. Furthermore, Mawruss, five continuous days is going to give them an opportunity to do a lot more real, hard thinking than they could do if they would have, we would say, for example, only one hour a day lay-off every other day over a period of a hundred days, Mawruss, and if at the end of them five days, Mawruss, they are going to take as much interest in the problems of this war as they are in the problem of how they are going to catch up with what they owe for five days' food and rent, Mawruss, I miss my guess, because Mr. Taft and Professor Jinks may think that them fellers is going to spend their five days' lockout in looking up war maps and sticking little colored flags in the positions now held by the French and German troops or in reading up the life of General Pershing and _My Three Years in Germany_ by Ambassador Gerard, Mawruss, _but I don't_."

"And yet, Abe, admitting all you say is true, y'understand, what reason do you got for supposing that before Mr. Garfield shut off the coal he didn't also consider all these things, when they even occurred to a feller like you?" Morris asked.

"What do you mean--a feller like me?" Abe demanded. "Thousands of people the country over is saying the selfsame thing."

"I know they are," Morris said. "And why you and they should think that what occurred to thousands of people the country over shouldn't also occur to Mr. Garfield, Abe, is beyond me. Now I don't know no more about this coal proposition than you do, Abe, but I am willing to take a chance that when a big man like Garfield, backed up by President Wilson, does a crazy thing like this, y'understand, he must have had an awful good reason for it, no matter how good the reasons were against it."

"Did I say he didn't?" Abe said.

"Then why knock the feller?" Morris asked.

"Say, looky here, Mawruss," Abe retorted, "are we living in Germany or America? An idee! On twenty-four hours' notice the government shuts off the coal-supply of the country and you expect that all that the people would say is, '_Omane! Solo!_' ('Amen! Selah!')."

"Well, that's the way a government does business--on short notice, Abe, which if Mr. Garfield would be one of them take-it-on-the-other-hand fellers who considers the matter from every angle before he decides, y'understand, while he would have still got a couple of thousand angles to consider the matter from, Abe, the country would have been tied up into such knots over the coal-and-freight situation that it would have required not five days, but five hundred days, to untangle it, y'understand," Morris said.

"But it seems to me, Mawruss, that Mr. Garfield could have spent, say, twenty-five minutes longer on that order of his, so that a manufacturer could tell from reading it over a few dozen times, with the assistance of a first-class, cracker-jack, A-number-one criminal lawyer, just what it was he couldn't do without making himself liable to a fine of five thousand dollars and one year imprisonment, y'understand," Abe said. "In fact, Mawruss, if the average manufacturer is going to try to understand that order before he does anything about it he'll have to shut down for five days while he is working to puzzle it out, and then he will keep his place closed down for five days longer while he is resting up from brain fag, understand me. Take, for instance, a department store which sells liquors and groceries, has a doctor in charge of the rest-room, and runs a public lunch-room in the basement, y'understand, and if the proprietor decided to make a test case of it by hiring John B. Stanchfield and keeping open on Monday, Mawruss, once Mr. Garfield got on the witness-stand and started to explain just what the exemptions exempted, y'understand, it would be years and years before he ever had a chance to see the old college again."

"But Mr. Garfield wrote that order to save coal, not arguments, Abe," Morris said. "He expected that the business men of the country would do the sensible thing next Monday by staying home and playing pinochle or poker, and those fellers which don't know enough about cards to even _kibbitze_ the game, y'understand, could go into another room and start in on their income-tax blanks, which, when it comes to figuring out what is capital and what is income in the excess-profits returns, Abe, there is many a business man which would not only put in all his Mondays between now and the first of March trying to straighten it out, y'understand, but would also be asking for further extensions of time to finish it up along about the fifteenth of April."

"And that's the way it goes, Mawruss," Abe commented, with a sigh. "It use to was in the old days that all a feller had to know to go into the clothing business was clothing, y'understand, but nowadays a manufacturer of clothing or any other merchandise must also got to be a certified public accountant, an expert of high-grade words from the English language, a liar, a detective, and should also be able to take the stand on his own behalf in such a level-head way that the assistant district attorney couldn't get him rattled on cross-examination."

"Well, my advice to these test-case fellers, Abe," Morris concluded, "is this: Be patriotic now. Don't wait till you're indicted."

XIX

MR. WILSON: THAT'S ALL

Potash and Perlmutter discuss the Chamberlain suggestion.

"You know how it is yourself, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, one morning in January. "If you would see somebody nailing up something your first idee is to say: 'Here, give me that hammer. Is that a way to nail up a packing-case?' And then, if you went to work and showed him how, the chances is that before you get through the packing-case would look like it had been nailed up with a charge of shrapnel, and for six months people would be asking you what's the matter with your sore thumb. Painting is the same way. There's mighty few people which could see anybody else doing a home job of enameling without they would want to grab ahold of the brush and get themselves covered with enamel from head to foot, y'understand. So can you imagine the way Mr. Roosevelt is feeling about this war, Mawruss?"

"Well, you've got to hand it to Mr. Roosevelt," Morris Perlmutter said. "He has had some small experience in that line, although, at that, you've got to take his statements of what ain't being done to run the war right with a grain of salt, Abe, whereas with Senator Chamberlain, y'understand, when he says that the President ain't running the war right according to the idees of a man which used to was a practising lawyer and politician out in the state of Oregon, y'understand, and, therefore, Abe, his speeches should ought to be barred by the Food Conservation Commission as being contrary to the Save the Salt movement."

"But even Mr. Roosevelt, which he may or may not know anything about running a modern army, as the case may be and probably ain't, Mawruss, because lots of changes has come about in the running of armies since Mr. Roosevelt went out of the business, Mawruss," Abe said, "but as I was saying, Mawruss, even Mr. Roosevelt, as big a patriot as _he_ is, y'understand, ain't above spoiling a perfectly good job half done by Mr. Wilson, because he just couldn't resist saying: 'Here, give me hold of them soldiers. Is that a way to run an army?"

"And besides, Abe," Morris said, "there's a great many people in this country, including Mr. Roosevelt, which believes that the only man which has got any license to say how the army should ought to be run is Mr. Roosevelt, y'understand, and ever since we got into this war, Abe, them fellers has been hanging around looking at Mr. Wilson like a crowd watching a feller gilding the ball on the top of the Metropolitan Tower, not wishing the feller any harm, y'understand, and hoping that he will either get away with it unhurt or make the drop while they are still standing there."

"They ain't so patient like all that, Mawruss," Abe said. "Them fellers has got so tired waiting for Mr. Wilson to fall down on his job that they now want to drag him down or, anyhow, trip him up."

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that," Morris declared, "but it looks to me that when Mr. Roosevelt read the results of the Senate investigations, y'understand, he wasn't as much shocked and surprised as he would have liked to have been, although to hear Senator Chamberlain talk you might think that what them investigations showed was bad enough to satisfy not only Mr. Roosevelt, but the Kaiser and his friends, also, when, as a matter of fact, the worst that any good American can say about Mr. Wilson as a result of them investigations is that instead of hiring angels who performed miracles, y'understand, he hired human beings who made mistakes."

"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But the worst thing of all that Mr. Wilson did was to say that Senator Chamberlain was talking wild when he made a speech about how every department of the government had practically gone to pieces, which Senator Chamberlain says that no matter how wild he may have talked before, nobody ever accused him that he talked wild in all the twenty-four years he has held public office."

"Well, that only goes to show how wild some people talk, Abe," Morris said, "because when a man has held office for twenty-four years, talking wild is the very least people accuse him of."

"But as a matter of fact, Mawruss, a feller from Oregon was telling me that Senator Chamberlain has held public office ever since eighteen eighty," Abe said. "He has run for everything from Assemblyman to Governor, and if he ain't able to remember by fourteen years how long he has held public office, Mawruss, how could he blame Mr. Wilson for accusing him that he is talking wild, in especially as he now admits that when he said all the departments of the government had broken down, y'understand, what he really meant was that the War Department had broken down. His word should not be questioned, or, in effect, that when a Senator presents a statement, the terms he is entitled to are seventy-five per cent. discount for facts."

"Some of 'em needs a hundred per cent.," Morris said, "but that ain't here nor there, Abe. This war is bigger than Mr. Chamberlain's reputation, even as big as Mr. Chamberlain thinks it is, and it don't make no difference to us how many speeches Mr. Roosevelt makes or what Senator Stone calls him or he calls Senator Stone. Furthermore, Senator Penrose, Senator McKellar, and this here Hitchcock can also volunteer to police the game, Abe, but when it comes right _to_ it, y'understand, every one of them fellers is just a _Kibbitzer_, the same like these nuisances that sit around a Second Avenue coffee-house and give free advice to the pinochle-players--all they can see is the cards which has been played, and as for the cards which is still remaining in Mr. Wilson's hand, they don't know no more about it than you or I do."

"And the only kick they've got, after all," Abe said, "is that President Wilson won't expose his hand, which if he did, Mawruss, he might just so well throw the game to Germany and be done with it."

"So you see, Abe, them fellers, including Mr. Roosevelt, is willing to let no personal modesty stand in the way of a plain patriotic duty, at least so far as thirty-three and a third per cent. of his answer was concerned. But at that, it wouldn't do him no good, Abe, because, owing to what Mr. Roosevelt maintains is an oversight at the time the Constitution of the United States was fixed up 'way back in the year seventeen seventy-six, y'understand, the President of the United States was appointed the Commander-in-chief to run the United States army and navy, and also the President was otherwise mentioned several other times, but you could read the Constitution backward and forward, from end to end, and the word ex-President ain't so much as hinted at, y'understand."

"Evidencely they thought that an ex-President would be willing to stay ex," Abe suggested.

"But Mr. Roosevelt ain't," Morris said. "All that he wanted from Mr. Wilson was a little encouragement to take some small, insignificant part in this war, Abe, and it would only have been a matter of a short time when it would have required an expert to tell which was the President and which was the ex, y'understand."

"I don't agree with you, Mawruss," Abe said. "Where Mr. Wilson has made his big mistake is that he is conducting this war on the theory of the old whisky brogan, 'Wilson! That's All.' If he would only of understood that you couldn't run a restaurant, a garment business, or even a war without stopping once in a while to jolly the knockers, Mawruss, all this investigation stuff would never of happened. Why, if I would have been Mr. Wilson and had a proposition like Mr. Roosevelt on my hands it wouldn't make no difference how rushed I was, every afternoon him and me would drink coffee together, and after I had made up my mind what I was going to do I would put it up to him in such a way that he would think the suggestion came from him, y'understand. Then I would find out what it was that Senator Chamberlain preferred, _gefullte Rinderbrust_ or _Tzimmas_, and whenever we had it for dinner, y'understand, I would have Senator Chamberlain up to the house and after he had got so full of _Tzimmas_ that he couldn't argue no more I would tell him what me and Mr. Roosevelt had agreed upon, and it wouldn't make no difference if I said to him, 'Am I right or wrong?' or 'Ain't that the sensible view to take of it?' he would say, 'Sure!' in either case."

"You may be right, Abe," Morris agreed, "but if he was to begin that way with Roosevelt and Chamberlain, the first thing you know, William Randolph Hearst would be looking to be invited up for a five-course-luncheon consultation, and the least Senator Wadsworth and Senator McKellar would expect would be an occasional Welsh rabbit up at the White House, which even if Mr. Wilson's conduct of the war didn't suffer by it, his digestion might, and the end would be, Abe, that every Senator who couldn't get the ear of the President with, anyhow, a Dutch lunch, would pull an investigation on him as bad as anything that Chamberlain ever started."

"It's too bad them fellers couldn't act the way Mr. Taft is behaving," Abe said. "There is an ex-President which is really and truly ex, y'understand, and seemingly don't want to be nothing else, neither."

"Well, Mr. Taft has got a whole lot of sympathy for Mr. Wilson, Abe," Morris said. "He knows how it is himself, because when he was President, y'understand, he also had experience with Mr. Roosevelt trying to police his administration."

"There's only one remedy, so far as I could see, Morris," Abe said, "if we're ever going to have Mr. Wilson make any progress with the war."

"You don't mean we should put through that law for the three brightest men in the country to run it?" Morris inquired.

"No, sir," Abe replied. "Put through a law that after anybody has held the office of ex-President for two administrations, Mawruss, he should become a private sitson--and mind his own business."

XX

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE GRAND-OPERA BUSINESS

"Where grand opera gets its big boost, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, the morning after Madame Galli-Curci made her sensational first appearance in New York, "is that practically everybody with a rating higher than J to L, credit fair, hates to admit that it don't interest them at all."

"And even if it did interest them, Abe," Morris Perlmutter said, "they would got to have at least that rating before they could afford it to buy a decent seat."

"Most of them don't begrudge the money spent this way, Mawruss, because it comes under the head of advertising and not amusement," Abe said. "Next to driving a four-horse coach down Fifth Avenue in the afternoon rush hour with a feller playing a New-Year's-eve horn on the back of the roof, Mawruss, owning a box at the Metropolitan Opera House is the highest-grade form of publicity which exists, and the consequence is that other people which believes in that kind of advertising medium, but couldn't afford to take so much space per week, sits in the cheaper ten-and six-dollar seats. And that's how the Metropolitan Opera House makes its money, Mawruss. It gets a thousand times better rates as any of the big five-cent weeklies, and it don't have to worry about the second-class-postage zones."

"But you don't mean to tell me that the people which stands up down-stairs and buys seats in the gallery is also looking for publicity?" Morris said.

"Them people is something else, again," Abe replied. "They are as different from the rest of the audience as magazine-readers is from magazine-advertisers. Take the box-holders in the Metropolitan Opera House and they _oser_ give a nickel what happens to Caruso. He could get burned in 'Trovatore,' stabbed in 'Pagliacci,' go to the devil in 'Faust,' and have his intended die on him in 'Boheme,' and just so long as their names is spelled right on the programs it don't affect them millionaires no more than if, instead of being the greatest tenor in the world, he would be an Interstate Commerce Commissioner. On the other hand, them top-gallery fellers treats him like a little god, y'understand, which if Caruso hands them opera fans a high C, Mawruss, it's the equivalence of Dun or Bradstreet giving one of them box-holders an A-a."

"Maybe you're right, Abe," Morris said, "but how do you account for people paying forty dollars for an orchestra seat at the Lexington Opera House just to hear this singer Galli-Curci in one performance only, which I admit I ain't no advertising expert, Abe, but it seems to me that if anybody is going to get benefit from publicity like that he might just so well circulate a picture of himself drinking champanyer wine out of a lady's satin slipper and be done with it, for all the good it is going to do him with the National Association of Credit Men."

"That is another angle of the grand-opera proposition, Mawruss," Abe said. "Paying forty dollars for an orchestra seat to hear this lady with the Lloyd-George name is the same like an operation for appendicitis to some people, Mawruss. It not only makes them feel superior to their friends which 'ain't had the experience, but it gives 'em a tropic of conversation which is never going to be barred by the statue of limitations, and for months to come such a feller is going to go round saying, 'Well, I heard Galli-Curci the other night,' and it won't make no difference if it's a pinochle game, a lodge funeral, or a real-estate transaction, he's going to hold it up for from fifteen minutes to half an hour while he talks about her upper register, her middle register, and her lower register to a bunch of people who don't know whether a coloratura soprano can travel on a sleeper south to Washington, D.C., or has to use the Jim Crow cars."

"All right, if it's such a crime not to know what a coloratura soprano is, Abe," Morris commented, "I'm guilty in the first degree. So go ahead, Abe. I'm willing to take my punishment. Tell me, what _is_ a coloratura soprano?"

"I suppose you think I don't know," Abe said.

"I don't think you don't know," Morris replied, "but I do think that the only reason you _do_ know, Abe, is that you 'ain't looked it up long enough since to have forgotten it."

"Is _that_ so!" Abe exclaimed. "Well, that's where you make a big mistake. I am already an experienced hand at going on the opera. When I was by Old Man Baum we had a customer by the name Harris Feinsilver, which if you only get him started on how he heard Jenny Lind at what is now the Aquarium in Battery Park somewheres around eighteen hundred and fifty-two, y'understand, you could sell him every sticker in the place, and him and me went often on the opera together. In fact I got so that I didn't mind it at all, and that's how I become acquainted with the different grades of singers which works by grand opera. Take, for instance, sopranos, and they come in two classes. There is the soprano which hollers murder police and they call her a dramatic soprano. And then again there is the soprano which gargles. That is a coloratura soprano."

"And people is paying forty dollars an orchestra seat to hear a woman gargle?" Morris exclaimed.

"Of course I don't say she actually gargles, y'understand," Abe explained, "anyhow not all the time, Mawruss. Once in a while she sings a song which has got quite a tune in it pretty near up to the end, and then she carries on something terrible anywheres from two to eight minutes till the feller that runs the orchestra couldn't stand it no longer and he gives them the signal they should drown her out."

"I should think he would get to know when it is coming on her and drown her out before she starts," Morris said.

"What do you mean--drown her out before she starts?" Abe continued. "That's what she gets paid for--carrying on in such a manner, and them people up in the top gallery goes crazy over it."

"Then why don't the feller which runs the orchestra let her keep it up?" Morris asked.

"A question!" Abe said. "There is from forty to fifty men working in the orchestra, and if the feller which runs it let them top-gallery people have their way it would cost him a fortune for overtime for them fellers that plays the fiddles alone."

"He should arrange a wage scale accordingly," Morris said, "because it don't make no difference if it's the garment business or the grand-opera business, Abe, the customer should ought to come first."

"_I_ always felt that I got _my_ money's worth, Mawruss," Abe said. "In particular when it comes to one of them operas with a coloratura soprano in it, y'understand, it seemed to me they could of cut down on the working time without hurting the quality of the goods in the slightest. There's always a good fifteen minutes wasted in such operas where a feller in the orchestra plays a little something on the flute and the coloratura soprano sings the same music on the stage, the idee being to show that you couldn't tell the difference between the feller playing the flute and the coloratura soprano except the feller playing the flute has all his clothes on. Then, again, during the death-bed scene in the last act they kill a whole lot of time also."

"Do you mean to say there's a death-bed scene in every one of them operas?" Morris inquired.

"Practically," Abe replied. "There ain't many grand operas where both the tenor and the soprano sticks it out alive till the end of the last act, Mawruss. Tenors, in particular, is awful risks, Mawruss, which I bet yer that eighty per cent. of the times I seen Caruso he either passed away along about quarter past eleven after an awful hard spell of singing, or give you the impression that he wasn't going to survive the soprano more than a couple of days at the outside."

"And yet some people couldn't understand why everybody takes in the Winter Garden or Ziegfeld's Follies," Morris commented.

"Of course I don't say that the audience suffers as much as if it was in the English language, but even when a lady dies in French or Italian I couldn't enjoy it, neither," Abe said.

"It seems to me, Abe, that a feller which goes often on grand opera is lucky if he understands only English," Morris observed.

"That's what you would naturally think, Mawruss," Abe agreed, "and yet there is people which is so anxious that they shouldn't miss none of the tenor's last words that they actually go to work and buy for twenty-five cents in the lobby a translation of the Italian operas, which I got stung that way only once, because to follow from the English translation what the singers is saying on the stage in Italian, Mawruss, a feller could be a combination of a bloodhound and a mind-reader, y'understand, and even then he would get twisted. For instance, Caruso comes out with a couple hundred assorted tenors and bassos, and so far as any human being could tell which don't understand Italian, Mawruss, he begs them that they shouldn't go out on strike right in the middle of the busy season, in particular when times is so hard and everything, and from the way he puts his hand on his heart it looks like he is also telling them that he is speaking to them as a friend, y'understand, and to consider their wives and children, understand me. All the effect this seems to have on them is that they yell, 'Down with the bosses!' and they insist on a closed shop and that the terms of the protocol should be lived up to. This gets Caruso crazy. He grabs his vest with both hands and makes one last big appeal, y'understand, in which he tells them that the delegates is stalling and that they are being made suckers of, and that if it would be the last word he would ever speak, the sensible thing is for them to go right back to work and leave it to arbitration by a joint board consisting of the president of the Manufacturers' Association, the chairman of the Garment Workers' Union, and Jacob H. Schiff, y'understand, but do you think they would listen to him? _Oser a Stueck!_ They laugh in his face, and it don't make no difference that he repeats it an octave higher accompanied by the fiddles, and gives them one last chance, ending on a high C, y'understand, they refuse to reconsider the matter, and when the curtain goes down it looks like the strike was on for fair. However, when the lights are turned on and you look it up in the English translation, what do you find? The entire thing was a false alarm, Mawruss. It seems that for twenty minutes Caruso has been singing over and over again, 'Come, my friends, let us go,' and the whole time them people was acting like they wanted to tear him to pieces, they have been saying, 'Yes, yes, let us go' a thousand times over, and that's all there was _to_ it."

"Well, after all, with a grand opera, it ain't so much the words as the music," Morris commented.

"Even the music they don't take it so particular about nowadays," Abe continued. "In fact, the up-to-date thing in grand opera is not to have any music, Mawruss, only samples, which some of them newest grand operas, Mawruss, if it wouldn't be that the people on the stage is making such a racket instead of the people in the audience you would think that the orchestra was continuing to tune up during the entire evening."

"Seemingly you didn't get a whole lot out of your visits to the opera, Abe," Morris said.

"Oh yes, I did," Abe replied. "I got some wonderful idees for dinner-dress designs and evening gowns. I 'ain't got no kick coming against the opera, Mawruss. A garment-manufacturer can put in a very profitable evening there any night if he can only stand the music."

XXI

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE MAGAZINE IN WAR-TIMES

"I am just now reading an article by a feller which his name I couldn't remember, but he used to was a baseball-writer for the New York _Moon,"_ Abe Potash said, as he laid down one of the several weeklies that have the largest circulation in the United States.

"Is this a time to read about baseball?" Morris Perlmutter asked.

"What do you mean--baseball?" Abe demanded. "I said that the feller _used_ to was a baseball-writer, but he is now a dramatic cricket."

"With me and dramatic crickets, Abe," Morris said, "it is always showless Tuesday, which when it comes to knocking plays, Abe, believe me, I don't need no assistance from nobody."

"Who said he is knocking plays, Mawruss?" Abe protested. "This here dramatic cricket has just returned from the western front, and he says that the way it looks now the war would last until--"

"Excuse me for interrupting you, Abe," Morris said, "but is there an article in that paper by a soldier which used to was a certified public accountant telling what is going to happen in the show business, because, if so, it might interest me, y'understand, but what a dramatic cricket who is also an ex-baseball-writer has got to say about the war, Abe, would only make me mad, Abe, because there is people writing about this war which really knows something about it, whereas as a general proposition it don't make no difference who writes about the show business, he usually don't know no more about it as, for example, a baseball-writer."

"That's where you make a big mistake, Mawruss," Abe said. "I have read articles about the war ever since the war started, and so far as I could see, Mawruss, the fellers which wrote them might just so well of stayed at home and got their dope from actors and baseball-players, because you take, for instance, the fellers which has written about conditions in Russland, Mawruss, and claims to have their information right on the spot from the Russian working-men and soldiers, y'understand, and from the way them fellers is all the time springing _Nitchyvo!_ and _Da!_ in their articles, Mawruss, it's a hundred-to-one proposition that them two words was all the Russian they was equipped with to carry on their conversations with them moujiks."

"For that matter, the fellers which writes the articles about the French end of the war don't seem to have had a nervous breakdown from studying French, neither," Morris observed. "All the French which them fellers puts into their writings is _O.U.I., m'sieu_, which don't look to me to be any more efficient as _C.O.D., m'sieu_, when it comes to finding out from a feller which speaks only French what he thinks about the war."

"Sure, I know," Abe agreed. "But a feller which writes such an article ain't aiming to tell what the French people thinks about the war. He is only writing what _he_ thinks French people is thinking about the war; in fact, Mawruss, I've yet got to see the war article which contains as much information about the war and the people fighting in the war as about the feller which is writing the article, and the consequence is that after you put in a whole evening reading such an article you find that you've learned a lot of facts which might be of interest to the war correspondent's family provided he has sent them home money regularly every week and otherwise behaved to them in the past in such a manner that they give a nickel whether he comes back dead or alive."

"Of course there is exceptions, Abe," Morris said. "There is them articles which gives an account of the big battle where if the Allies would of only gone on fighting for one hour longer, Abe, they would of busted through the German line and the war would of been, so to speak, over."

"What big battle was that, Mawruss?" Abe asked.

"Practically every big battle which a war correspondent has written an article about since the war started," Morris replied, "and also while the article don't exactly say so, y'understand, it leads you to believe that if the feller which wrote it would of been running the battle, Abe, things would of been very different. Then again there is them articles which contains an account of just to prove how cool the English soldiers is, Abe, the war correspondent which wrote it heard about a private which had the hiccoughs during the heavy gunfire and asks some one to scare him so that he can cure his hiccoughs, which to me it don't prove so much how cool the English soldiers is as how some editors of magazines seemingly never go to moving-picture vaudeville shows."

"Editors 'ain't got no time for such nonsense, Mawruss," Abe said. "They got _enough_ to keep 'em busy busheling the jobs them war correspondents turns in on them. Also, Mawruss, running a magazine in war-times ain't such a cinch, neither. Take in the old times before the war, and if a trunk railroad got wrecked, y'understand, people stayed interested long enough so that even if the article about how the head of the guilty banking concern worked his way up didn't appear till three months afterward, it was still good, but you take it to-day, Mawruss, and the chances is that a dozen articles about how Leon Trotzky used to was a feller by the name Braustein which are now slated to be put into the May edition of the magazine is going to be killed along with Trotzky somewheres about the middle of next month. In fact, Mawruss, things happen so thick and fast in this war that three months from now the only thing that people is going to remember about Brest-Litovsk and Galli-Curci will be the hyphens, and they won't be able to say offhand whether or not it was Brest-Litovsk that had the soprano voice or the peace conference."

"Well, if a magazine editor gets stumped for something to take the place of an article which went sour on him, Abe," Morris suggested, "he could always print a story about a beautiful lady spy, and usually does, y'understand, which the way them amateur spy-hunters gets their dope from reading magazines nowadays, Abe, if the magazines prints any more of them beautiful lady-spy stories, y'understand, a beautiful face on a lady is soon going to be as suspicious-looking as Heidelberg dueling scars on a man, and it's bound to have quite an adverse effect on the complexion-cream business."

"But you've got to hand it to these magazine editors, Mawruss," Abe said. "They ain't afraid to print articles which coppers the advertisements in the back pages. I am reading only this morning an article which it says on page twenty-eight of the magazine that people in Berlin is getting made _Geheimeraths_ and having eagles hung on them by the Kaiser in all shades from red to Copenhagen blue for helping out Germany in this war by doing things that ain't one, two, six compared with what a feller in New York does when he buys a fifteen-hundred-dollar automobile, y'understand, and yet on pages thirty, thirty-two, thirty-eight, forty, and all the other pages from forty-one to fifty inclusive, the same magazine prints advertisements of automobiles costing from ten thousand dollars downwards, F.O.B. a freight-car in Detroit which should ought to be filled with ship-building material F.O.B. Newark, N.J."

"That ain't the magazine's fault, Abe," Morris said. "If it wasn't kept going by the money the advertisers pays for such advertisements it wouldn't be able to print them articles telling people it is unpatriotic to buy the automobiles which the advertisement says they should ought to buy."

"Maybe you're right," Abe said, "but in that case when a magazine prints an advertisement by the Charoses Motor Car Company that the new Charoses inclosed models in designs and luxury of appointment surpass the finest motor-carriages of this country and Europe, Mawruss, the editor should add in small letters, 'But see page twenty-eight of this magazine,' and then when the reader turns to page twenty-eight and finds out what the article says about pleasure cars in war-times, y'understand, he would think twice, ain't it?"

"Sure, I know," Morris said. "But there's always the danger that the advertiser would also turn to page twenty-eight, so as a business proposition for the magazine, it would be better if the editors stick to them _nitchyvo_ articles, which if the advertisers turn to page twenty-eight and see one of those articles the only thing that would worry them, y'understand, is whether or not the reader is going to get so disgusted that he would throw away the magazine before he reached the advertising section."

"That ain't how __I look at it, Mawruss," Abe protested. "The way a manufacturer has to figure costs so close nowadays, Mawruss, anything like these here war articles which gives you an example of how to turn out the finished product with the least amount of labor and material in it, Mawruss, should ought to be of great interest to the business man. For instance, you ask one of them live, up-to-date young fellers which is now writing about the war with such a good imitation of being right next to all the big diplomatic secrets that no one would ever suspect how before the war he used to think when he saw the word Gavour in the papers that it wasn't spelled right and cost a dollar fifty a portion with hard-boiled egg and chopped onions on the side, y'understand, and we'll say that such a feller is ordered by the magazine _nebich_ which he works for to go and see Mr. Lloyd George and fill up pages twelve, thirteen, and fourteen of the April, nineteen seventeen, edition with what Lloyd George tells him about political conditions in Europe. Well, the first time he goes to Mr. Lloyd George's house we will say he gets kicked down the front stoop, on account when he says he represents the _Interborough Magazine_, the butler thinks he comes from the subscription department instead of the editorial department and didn't pay no attention to the sign 'No Canvassers Allowed on These Premises.' Do you suppose that feazes the young feller? _Oser a Stueck!_ He goes straight back home, paints the place where he landed with iodine, y'understand, and writes enough to fill up the whole of page twelve about how, unlike President Wilson, Mr. Lloyd George believes in surrounding himself with strong men. The next time he calls there he gets into the front parlor while he sends up his card, and before the butler could return with the message that Mr. Lloyd George says he wouldn't be back for some days, y'understand, Mrs. Lloyd George happens in and wants to know who let him in there and he should go and wait outside in the vestibule, which is good for half a page of how Mr. Lloyd George's success in politics is due in great measure to the tact and diplomacy of his charming wife.