, for all the good it will do."

"Still, it ain't a bad idee to have all these dinners over and done with
before the business of the Peace Conference begins, Mawruss," Abe
remarked, "because hafterwards, when Mr. Wilson's attitude on some of
them fourteen propositions for peace becomes known, y'understand, it
ain't going to be too pleasant for Mrs. Wilson to be sitting by the side
of her husband and watch the looks of some of the guests sitting
opposite during the fish course, for instance, not wishing him no harm,
but waiting for a good-sized bone to lodge sideways in his throat, or
something."

"She is used to that from home already, whenever she has a few
Republican Senators to dinner at the White House," Morris said. "But
that ain't here nor there, anyhow, because after the Peace Conference
begins the President will be so busy, y'understand, that sending out one
of the Assistant Secretaries of State to a Busy Bee lunch-room to bring
him a couple of sandwiches and some coffee will be the nearest to a
formal dinner that the President will come to for many a day. Take, for
instance, the proposition of the Freedom of the Seas, and there's a
whole lot to be said on both sides by people like yourself which don't
know one side from the other."

"And I don't want to know, neither," Abe said, "because it wouldn't make
no difference to me how free the seas was made, once I get back on terra
cotta, Mawruss; they could not only make the seas free, y'understand,
but they could also offer big bonuses in addition, and I wouldn't leave
America again not if they was to give me a life pass good on the
_Olympic_ or _Aquitania_ with meals included."

"So your idea is that the freedom of the seas means traveling for
nothing on ocean steamers?" Morris commented.

"Say!" Abe retorted, "why should I bother my head what such things mean
when I got for a partner a feller which really by rights belongs down at
the Peace headquarters, along with them other big experts?"

"I never claimed to be an expert, but at the same time, I ain't an
ignerammus, neither, which even before I left New York, I knew all
about this here Freedom of the Seas," Morris said, "which the day
before we sailed I was talking to Henry Binder, of Binder & Baum, and he
says to me--"

"Excuse me, but what does Binder & Baum know about the Freedom of the
Seas?" Abe demanded. "They are in the wholesale pants business, ain't
it?"

"Sure, I know," Morris continued, "an