and diamond cards to the
fish-dealer and the vegetable-dealer and maybe it would help to stop
them fellers from loading their prices with what it costs 'em to keep up
their expensive habits."

"A fish-dealer is entitled to expensive habits the same like anybody
else," Abe said, "which if Mr. Hoover stops him from buying his wife
once in a while diamonds, sooner or later Mr. Hoover will stop him from
buying his wife furs and it will work down right along the line till Mr.
Hoover hits the garment business, Mawruss, which, while I ain't got no
particular sympathy for a fish-dealer, y'understand, his money is just
so good as the next one's, so I ask you, as a garment-manufacturer, what
are you going to do about it?"

"Let him buy Liberty Bonds."

"But in that case, how many Liberty Bonds could the diamond merchant,
the automobile-manufacturer, or the furrier buy?"

"Say, looky here," Morris said, "let me alone, will you? This is
something which is up to Mr. Hoover, not me."

"I know it is," Abe concluded, "and I've got a great deal of sympathy
for him, too, because before Mr. Hoover gets through he would not only
make a bunch of enemies, Mawruss, but he is going to use up a whole lot
of headache medicine, and don't you forget it."

VII

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

The hopeless part of it is that there's no way of putting a nation of
ninety million people in a lunatic asylum, even if there was an
asylum big enough to hold them, which there ain't.

"I see where the French President is going to lose his Prime Minister
again," Abe Potash said, "which the way that feller is always changing
Prime Ministers, Mawruss, he must be a terrible hard man to work for."

"Say," Morris Perlmutter replied, "I've got enough to think about
keeping track of what happens here in this country without I should
worry my head over political _Meises_ in France."

"Well, you are the same like a whole lot of Americans," Abe said, "which
for all they read about what is going on over in Europe the Edison
Manufacturing Company might just so well never have invented the
telegraph at all."

"I don't _got_ to read it with such a statesman like you around here,"
Morris retorted, "so go ahead and tell me: what did the French Prime
Minister done _now_ that he gets fired for it?"

"That only goes to show what you know from Prime Ministers!" Abe
declared. "A Prime Minister never gets fired, Mawruss--he resigns, and