ps once in a while, Mawruss, but so far as I am concerned
this here Prohibition can come into effect this afternoon yet, and it
wouldn't affect me none."

"I am the same way, Abe. I can drink and I can leave it alone," Morris
said. "Or, anyhow, I _think_ I can."

XVIII

BEING UP IN THE AIR, AS APPLIED TO TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHTS, CROWN JEWELS,
AND LEAGUE OF NATIONS SPEECHES

"The way I feel about it is this, Mawruss," Abe Potash said to his
partner, Morris Perlmutter: "It don't make no difference if them two
boys failed in their intentions, y'understand, they succeeded in making
millions and millions of people in Paris, Winnipeg, New York, and who
knows where not, stop hating each other for anyhow a few hours, and
instead they smiled and shook hands and allowed themselves a recess in
their regular work of winning strikes, losing strikes, shooting,
starving, and cheating each other and their countries, while they all
joined in being glad that Mrs. Hawker and the baby had got the popper
back home with them and that Grieve was safe with his family or anyhow
as safe as a young feller can be who is liable to quit his home at any
moment and do the same wonderful, foolish thing all over again."

"It's too bad that all them strikers and Bolsheviks which is acting as
senselessly as children, couldn't also act as sensibly as children,
Abe," Morris Perlmutter observed, "and stop crying long enough to
forget what they were crying about, y'understand, but they won't. They
are bound and determined to eat the goose which lays the golden eggs,
Abe, and the end is going to be that they will find out it ain't a goose
at all, but that instead of killing a goose that's fit for food they
have only smashed an incubator that's fit for nothing but laying more
eggs, and that's the way it goes."

"Well, it's certainly wonderful how popular them two young fellers
become in the course of a few days, Mawruss," Abe declared. "Which makes
you think, Mawruss, if such a thing happens to two unknown young men
like Hawker and Grieve, there is big possibilities in this
cross-the-ocean flight for fellers which was once highly thought of and
which nowadays nobody gives a nickel about. Take, for instance, them two
William J. fellers, Bryan and McAdoo, which only a short time since
people was reading about it in the papers, Mawruss, and what them
fellers should ought to do is to hire a good, undependable airyoplane,
y'understand, and take the firs