soon
as the new chief of police is appointed by the Red or Yellow government,
as the case may be, he don't waste no time, but he right away sends out
plain-clothes men to the proprietors of them Berlin all-night
restaurants with positive instructions to close all restaurants at
eleven sharp and not to accept nothing but gold coin of the present
standard of weight and fineness."

"And yet it used to be thought that when it comes to graft, Mawruss,
German officials was like Caesar's ghost," Abe observed--"above
suspicion."

"That's only another way of them impressions about Germany which us
Americans has had reversed on us, Abe," Morris said, "which the way our
idees about what kind of a people the Germans used to was has changed,
Mawruss, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the old habit the
Germans had for drinking beer was just a bluff, y'understand, and that
at heart they was prohibitionists to a man. In fact, Abe, if I would be
a German Bolshevik with instructions to shoot the Kaiser on sight, I
should go gunning for a short, stout man with a tooth-brush mustache and
a holy horror of wearing uniforms, because it's my opinion that all them
so-called portraits of the Kaiser was issued for the purpose of
misleading anarchists to shoot at a thin man in a heavily embroidered
uniform with spike-end mustaches."

"Well, whatever he looks like, Mawruss," Abe said, "if I was him,
rather than have such a terrible fate hanging over me, y'understand, I
would telegraph to Berlin for them to send along a good shot while they
was about it, and have the thing over with quick, Mawruss."

"Say!" Morris exclaimed. "You and me should have hanging over us the
life which the Kaiser is going to lead from now on! For two hundred and
fifty dollars a week at a Pallum Beach hotel you could only get a very
small idea of the hardships the Kaiser will got to undergo in the
future, Abe."

"But do you mean to told me that after what happened to that English
lady in Brussels and the captain of the English mail-boat, Mawruss, the
English ain't going to persecute the Kaiser?" Abe demanded.

"_You_--the English would persecute the Kaiser!" Morris exclaimed.
"Don't you know that the Kaiser's mother was the King of England's
father's sister? Do you suppose for a moment that the King of England
wants a convict in the family?"

"Well, has he got any _mishbocha_ in France, Mawruss?" Abe asked.
"Because if not, Mawruss, it seems to me that now, w