"But the biggest punishment of all you 'ain't even hinted at yet," Abe
said, "and it's a punishment which thousands of Americans is getting
right now without no sympathy from nobody, which its name is:

"'Form 1040. United States Internal Revenue
Service

INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAX RETURN

For Net Incomes of More than $5,000

FOR CALENDAR YEAR, 1918.'

Also, Mawruss, when you consider what the Kaiser done, Mawruss, I ask
you is it too much that the Committee on Fixing Responsibility should
order him starved to death or talked to death or any other slow and
painful death, because such a fate is going to be a happy one compared
with the thousands of decent, respectable American business men which is
headed straight for an insane-asylum, trying to fill out

"'(a) Totals taxable at 1918 rates (see instructions page 2 under C).

(b) Totals taxable at 1917 rates (see instructions, included in K (a)
page 2).

(c) Amount of stock dividends (column 4) taxable at 1916 rates
(enter as 20).'"

"Well, after all, Abe," Morris said, "there's one worser punishment you
could hand out the Kaiser than filling out this here income tax."

"What's that?" Abe inquired.

"Paying it," Morris said.

VIII

IT ENTERS ON ITS NO-GOLD-CASKET PHASE

"When a feller gets his name in the papers as often as Mr. Wilson,
Mawruss, it don't take long for them highwaymen to get on to him," Abe
Potash remarked, shortly after Mr. Wilson's return to Paris.

"What highwaymen?" Morris inquired.

"Them presidents of orphan-asylums and homes," Abe said, "and in a way
it serves Mr. Wilson right, Mawruss, because, instead of keeping it to
himself that he got stuck over four thousand dollars for tips alone
while he was in France, y'understand, as soon as he arrived in Boston he
goes to work and blabs the whole thing to newspaper reporters, and you
could take it from me, Mawruss, that for the next six months Mr. Wilson
would be flooded with letters from Associations for the Relief of
Indignant Armenians, Homes for Chronic Freemasons, and who knows what
else. So therefore you take this here Carter H. Glass, Mawruss, and he
naturally comes to the conclusion that Mr. Wilson is an easy mark,
because--"

"Excuse me, Abe," Morris interrupted, coldly, "but who do you think
this here Carter H. Glass is, anyway?"

"I don't know," Abe went on, "but whoever he is he probably figured that
if