.01
Swiss chard .005
War tax .02

-----

Total $.06"

"Sure I know," Morris agreed, "but the art about taxing cigars ain't so
much to sting the feller that manufactures them and the feller that buys
them as the fellers which accepts them free for nothing. There is a
whole lot of women's-wear retailers in the Middle West which has got
quite a reputation for hospitality, because whenever they have a poker
game up to the house they hand out cigars which cost you and me and
other garment manufacturers here in New York as much as ninety dollars a
thousand wholesale. So what I say is that the government should tax
anybody which accepts a cigar to smoke on the spot ten cents, and for
every one of them put-it-in-your-pocket-and-smoke-it-after-a-while
cigars, such a feller should be taxed ten dollars or ten days."

"Well, they'll get a whole lot of money raising postage from two to
three cents," Abe suggested.

"But not so much as they could get if they was to go about it right,"
Morris said. "For sending letters which says, 'Inclosed please find
check in payment of your last month's bill and oblige,' three cents is
enough for any business man to pay, Abe, and in fact the feller which
received such a letter shouldn't ought to kick if the Post Office
Department makes him pay also three cents postage, but there is some
letters which it should ought to be the law that when a merchant
received one of them he should right away report the sender to the Post
Office Department for a special war-tax stamp of from one to a hundred
dollars. For instance, two dollars extra wouldn't be too much postage
for a letter where it says, 'Your favor received and contents noted, and
in reply would say you should be so kind and wait a couple days and I
would see what I could do toward sending you a check for your March
bill, as my wife has been sick ever since May fifteenth, and oblige,
yours truly, The Reliance Store, M. Doober, proprietor.'"

"If all them overdue retailers which is all the time pulling a sick wife
on their creditors was to be taxed two dollars apiece, Mawruss," Abe
said, "how much postage do you figure a storekeeper should pay when he
writes to claim a shortage in delivery before he starts to unpack the
goods, even. Then there is the feller which, when it don't get below
z