s in this
country which is doing all they know how to handle the situation over in
the old country, and then if you want something near at home to worry
about like stomach trouble, y'understand, there's plenty of misfortunate
people in orphan asylums and hospitals right here in New York City which
will be very glad to have you worry over them in a practical way out of
what you've got left when you're through paying income and excise profit
taxes, Abe."

"Maybe there is some people which would get so upset over having to give
twenty dollars or so to an orphan asylum or a hospital, Mawruss, that
for the time being they could forget how General Crozier 'ain't ordered
the machine-guns yet," Abe said, "but me I ain't built that way. When it
says in the papers where the Germans is sending all their soldiers away
from the Russian front to the Italian front, y'understand, it may be
that some people could read it and try not to worry by sending five
dollars to them Highwaymen for Improving the Condition of the Poor,
Mawruss, but when _I_ read it, Mawruss, I think how it's all up to them
Bolsheviki in Russia, and I get awful sore at the poor--in especially
the Russian poor."

"What are you worrying your head about what they put in the papers?"
Morris asked. "Seventy-five per cent. of the bridge-heads which the
Germans capture in the New York morning papers might just so well be
French villages, except that the reporters would have to look up the
names of the villages on the map, because some editors are very
particular that way; they insist that the reporter should use the name
of a real village, whereas if he puts down that the Germans has captured
a bridge-head on the Piave River he could go right out to lunch, and he
never even stops to think that if somebody would check up the number of
bridge-heads which the Germans has captured that way in the New York
morning papers, Abe, the Piave River would got to be covered solid with
bridges from end to end."

"But I am just so bad as a reporter, Mawruss--I never stop to think
that, neither," Abe admitted. "It's my nature that I couldn't help
believing the foolishness which I read in the papers, and if the Germans
capture a bridge-head on me in the Sporting Edition with Final Wall
Street Complete they might just so well capture it in Italy and be done
with it, because if I play cards afterward I couldn't keep my mind on
the game, anyhow. Only last Sunday I had a three-hundred-and-f