you got to go outside
yet and find 'em. You got to go into the real estate business too."

"Real-estaters ain't got no such trouble like _we_ got it, Abe," Morris
retorted. "There ain't no seasons in real estate, Abe. A tenement house
this year is like a tenement house last year, Abe, also the year before.
They ain't wearing stripes in tenement houses one year, Abe, and solid
colors the next. All you do when you got a tenement house, Abe, is to go
round and collect the rents, and when you got a customer for it you
don't have to draw no report on him. Spot cash, he pays it, Abe, or else
you get a mortgage as security."

"You talk like Scheuer Blumenkrohn, Mawruss, when he comes round here
last year and wants to swap it two lots in Ozone Grove, Long Island, for
a couple of hundred misses' reefers," Abe replied. "When I speculate,
Mawruss, I take a hand at auction pinochle."

"This ain't no speculation, Abe," said Morris. "This is an investment. I
seen the house, Abe, six stories and basement stores, and you couldn't
get another tenant into it with a shoehorn. It brings in a fine income,
Abe."

"Well, if that's the case, Mawruss," Abe rejoined, "why does Harris
Rabin want to sell it? Houses ain't like cloaks and suits, Mawruss, you
admit it yourself. We sell goods because we don't get no income by
keepin' 'em. If we have our store full with cloaks, Mawruss, and they
brought in a good income while they was in here, Mawruss, I wouldn't
want to sell 'em, Mawruss; I'd want to keep 'em."

"Sure," Morris replied. "But if the income was only four hundred and
fifty dollars a month, and next month you got a daughter what was
getting married to Alec Goldwasser, drummer for Klinger & Klein, and you
got to give Alec a couple of thousand dollars with her, but you don't
have no ready cash, _then_, Abe, you'd sell them cloaks, and so that's
why Harris Rabin wants to sell the house."

"I want to tell you something, Mawruss," Abe replied. "Harris Rabin
could sell a phonograft to a deef-and-dummy. He could sell moving
pictures to a home for the blind, Mawruss. He could also sell anything
he wanted to anybody, Mawruss, for you know as well as I do, Mawruss,
Harris Rabin is a first-class, A-number-one salesman. And so, if he
wants to sell his house so cheap there's lots of real-estaters what know
a bargain in houses when they see it. We don't, Mawruss. We ain't
real-estaters. We're in the cloak and suit business, and why should
Harris