r. 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 aff