teen?"

Morris shrugged his shoulders. "What is the use of talking pipe dreams?"
he said.

"I ain't talking pipe dreams," Abe retorted. "This is something which
not only Chump Clark suggested it, but Senator LaFollette also as a good
scheme for financing the war."

"Evidently they don't expect the war to last long," Morris commented,
"which the most the government could hope to collect is the excess
income for nineteen seventeen, because if the government confiscates
five thousand five hundred dollars on me in nineteen seventeen, am I
going to go around in the summer of nineteen eighteen beefing about
business being rotten because here it is the first of July, nineteen
eighteen, and so far all the government could confiscate on me is two
thousand two hundred and sixty-seven dollars and thirty-eight cents,
whereas on July first, nineteen seventeen, I had already got confiscated
on me two thousand four hundred and thirty-one dollars and fifty cents?
_Oser a Stueck!_ If I have made ten thousand dollars as early as April
first, nineteen eighteen, and I know that all further profits for
nineteen eighteen is going to be confiscated by the government,
y'understand, right then and there I am going to shut up shop and paste
a notice on the door:

GONE TO LUNCH

WILL RETURN
JANUARY 2, 1919

and anybody else would do the same, Abe, I don't care if he would be as
patriotic as Senator LaFollette himself even."

"But that ain't the only idees for financing the war which Congress has
got it, Mawruss," Abe said. "On everything which a feller buys, from
pinochle decks to headache medicine, he will have to put a stamp. There
will be extra stamps on all kinds of checks from bank checks and poker
checks to bar checks and hat checks. There will be red stamps, blue
stamps, and stamps in all pastel shades, and when they run out of colors
they'll print 'em in black and white and issue them to the public in
flavors like wintergreen, peppermint, spearmint, and clove for bar-check
stamps and strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate nut Sunday for
theayter-ticket stamps."

"For my part they could flavor 'em with _gefullte Miltz mit Knockerl_,
because I got through buying orchestra seats when they begun to tax you
two dollars and fifty cents for them, Abe, which if the government
really and truly wants to raise money by taxing the public, why do they
fool away their time asking suggestions from such new beginners like
LaFollette and Chump