think so," Abe replied. "The names is only a quincidence, which
even before Lord George was ever heard of at all the Prime Minister
always run things in England while the King put in his whole time
opening charity bazars and laying corner-stones. First and last I
suppose that feller has laid more corner-stones than all the heads of
all the fraternal orders in the United States put together, and if
there's such a disease as grand master's thumb, like smoker's heart and
housemaid's knee, Mawruss, I'll bet that King George has got it."

[Illustration: "Perhaps it's because this here Lord George and King
George is related maybe," Morris suggested. "I don't think so," Abe
replied. "The name is only a quincidence."]

"Well an English king can afford to spend his time that way," Morris
said, "because them English Prime Ministers is really prime,
y'understand, whereas you take the Prime Ministers which the Czar
_nebich_, the King of Greece, and even the King of Sweden had it, and
instead of them Prime Ministers being prime, understand me, they ranged
all the way from sirloin to chuck, as they would say in the meat
business."

"Some of the English Prime Ministers wasn't so awful prime, neither,"
Abe said. "Take the feller which was holding down the job of Prime
Minister around July fourth, seventeen seventy-six, and the way that boy
let half a continent slip through his fingers was enough to make King
Schmooel the Second, or whatever the English king's name was in them
days, swear off laying corner-stones for the rest of his life. Also the
English Prime Minister which engineered the real-estate deal where
Germany got ahold of the island of Heligoland wasn't what Mr. P.B.
Armour would call first cut exactly, which, if England would now own
Heligoland instead of Germany, Mawruss, such a serial number as U
Fifty-three for a German submarine would never have been heard of. They
would have stopped short at U Two or U Two B."

"Well, anybody's liable to get stuck in a swap with vacant lots, Abe,"
Morris said, "and the chances is the poor feller figured that with this
here Heligoland, the only person who would have the nerve to call such
real estate _real estate_, y'understand, would be a real-estater with a
first-class imagination when the tide was out."

"That's what Germany figured, too," Abe said, "and the consequence is
she went to work and improved them vacant lots with fortifications which
lay so low in the water, Mawruss,