oom will never look the same again."

"I wonder if there ain't some kind of property-damage insurance that he
could have took out against a thing happening like that?" Abe
speculated.

"I don't know," Morris said, "but if there is, you can bet your life
that this here Mrs. Bischoffsheim, where the President is staying now,
has got it."

"And she is going to need it, Mawruss," Abe said, "because what the best
home-trained men do with cigarettes and fountain-pens, when their minds
are occupied with business matters, ain't calculated to improve the
appearance of a bar-room, neither."

"Say!" Morris commented. "The President _oser_ cares what his address is
in Paris, but I'll bet you he is doing a lot of thinking as to what it
is going to be in Washington after March 4, 1921."

"It ain't a question of who is going to move _out_ of the White House,
Mawruss," Abe said. "What people in America is wondering is, Who is
going to move _in_, which right now there is a couple of generals, five
or six Senators, and a banker or so which is figuring on not renewing
the leases of their apartments beyond March 3, 1921, in case they should
be obliged to go to Washington for four years, or maybe eight."

"Lots of things can happen before the next presidential election,"
Morris said.

"That's what these Senators and generals thinks," Abe agreed, "and in
the mean time, Mawruss, nobody has got to press them a whole lot to
speak at dinners and conventions, which I see that a general made a
speech at a meeting in memory of Grover Cleveland the other day where he
didn't refer once to Mr. Wilson, but said that Mr. Cleveland wasn't an
expert at verbal messages and believed in the Monroe Doctrine."

"Well, suppose the general did say that," Morris said. "What of it?"

"Nothing of it," Abe replied; "but on the other hand, if this here
general had gone a bit farther, understand me, and said that Grover
Cleveland never refused to meet Judge Cohalan at the Metropolitan Opera
House and as a general rule didn't act cold toward a Sinn Fein
committee, Mawruss, you would got to admit that such remarks is anyhow
suspicious, ain't it?"

"All it is suspicious of to me, Abe," Morris said, "is that if such a
general has got ambitions to be President, y'understand, he ain't going
the right way about it, because fashions in opinions changes like
fashions in garments, Abe. At this day and date nobody could tell no
more about what the people of the Unite