r reference ain't good?"

"He didn't seem to be worrying about his own future," Abe continued,
"but he seemed to think that if the old man got tried by the Allies,
Mawruss, the shock would kill him."

"Many a murderer got tried by the Court of General Sessions, even, and
subsequently the shock killed them, Abe," Morris said. "What is electric
chairs for, _anyway_?"

"But he told the reporter that you wouldn't have any idea how old the
old man is looking," Abe went on.

"He shouldn't take so much wood-cutting exercise," Morris said. "The
first thing you know, he would injure himself for life, even if he ain't
going to live long."

"Don't fool yourself, Mawruss," Abe said, "the Kaiser ain't going to die
from nothing more violent than a rich, unbalanced diet, y'understand,
and as for the Crown Prince, he's got it all figured out that he will
return to Germany and go into the farming business, and there ain't no
provided-I-beat-the-indictment about it, neither, because he knows as
well as you do that the Allies would never have the nerve to try either
one of them crooks."

"Nobody seems to have the nerve to do anything nowadays, except the
Bolshevists, Abe," Morris said, with a sigh. "Here up to a few days ago
the Bolshevist government of Russia had been running a New York office
on West Forty-second Street, with gold lettering on the door, a staff of
stenographers, and a private branch exchange, and the New York police
didn't pay no more attention to them than if they would of been running
a poolroom with a roulette-wheel in the rear office. The consequence was
that when them Bolshevists finally got pulled, Abe, they beefed so
terrible about how they were being prosecuted in violation of the
Constitution and the Code of Civil Procedure, y'understand, that you
would think the bombs which Mr. Palmer and them judges nearly got killed
with was being exploded pursuant to Section 4244 of the United States
Revised Statutes and the acts amendatory thereof, Abe."

"And we let them cutthroats do business yet!" Abe exclaimed.

"Well, in a way, I don't blame the Bolshevists for not knowing how to
take the behavior of the American government towards them, Abe," Morris
declared. "If we only had one way of treating them and stick _to_ it,
Abe, it would help people like this here ex-custom-house feller Dudley
Field Malone and this ex-Red Cross feller Robins to know where they
stood in the matter of Bolshevism. But when even the U