shouldn't ought to got no _Rishus_ against him even
if he would be only over here on a leave of absence dating from January
first, nineteen fifteen, up to and including seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars," Abe said, "because it is claimed that the best
fiddlers in the world and the best conductors in the world don't belong
to any country. They are international."

"Maybe they are, Abe," Morris agreed, "but the money which they earn
belongs to the country in which they spend it, understand me, which my
idea is that these are war-times, and if the ordinary people is willing
to take their wheat bread with a little potato flour in it, them
big-league music fans should ought to be willing to take their
fiddle-playing with a few sour notes in it, so if the best fiddler in
the world is an Austrian who spends his money at home, y'understand,
they should ought to be contented with the next best one, and if he is
also an Austrian or a German let them work on right straight down the
line till they find one who ain't, because trading with the enemy is
trading with the enemy, whether you are trading with a German fiddler or
a German fish-dealer, and if you are going to hand over money to Germany
it don't make much difference if you do it in the name of art or in the
name of fish."

"Well, you couldn't exactly feel the same way about an artist with his
art as you could about a fish-dealer with his fish," Abe protested.

"I didn't say you could," Morris said. "I've got every respect for this
here Kreisler as a feller which plays something elegant on the fiddle,
but at the same time he has had himself extensively advertised with
pictures the same like King C. Gillette and William L. Douglas, and
that's probably what made him, Abe, because it's pretty safe to say that
if you could by any possibility induce and persuade them people which is
hollering about art being international and Kreisler being the best
fiddler in existence, y'understand, to go and hear Kreisler at a concert
where under the name of Harris Fine and wearing false whiskers he was
playing a program consisting principally of Rabinowitz's Concerto in G,
Opus number Two fifty-six B, y'understand, they would come away saying
it was awful rotten even for an amateur and that you should ought to
hear Kreisler play Rabinowitz's Concerto in G, Opus number Two fifty-six
B, and then you would know how that feller Harris Fine murdered it. So
that's why I say, Abe, that adver