Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things

V

"Sure you could," Morris Perlmutter agreed, "because the way this here Peace Conference is being run, Abe, when Mr. Clemenceau says: 'All those in favor would please say Aye,' he ain't asking them, he's telling them, which I was speaking to the newspaper feller last night, Abe, and he says that, compared to the delegates at this here Peace Convention, y'understand, the delegates of a New York County Democratic Convention are free to act as they please. In fact, Abe, as I understand it, at the sewed-up political conventions which they hold it in America, the bosses do occasionally let a delegate get up and say a few words which ain't on the program exactly, but at this here Peace Convention a delegate who tries to get off a speech which 'ain't first been submitted in writing ten days in advance should ought to go into training for it by picking quarrels with waiters in all-night restaurants.

"Take this here meeting which they held it on Saturday, Abe," Morris continued, "and it was terrible the way Chairman Clemenceau jumps, for instance, on a feller from Belgium by the name M. Hyman."

"That ain't the same M. Hyman which used to was M. Hyman & Co. in the coat-pad business?" Abe inquired.

"This here M. Hyman used to was a Belgium minister in London," Morris went on, "which he got up and objected to the way the five big nations—America, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan—was, so to speak, hogging the convention."

"Well, I think the Reverend Hyman was right, at that," Abe said, "which I just finished reading Mr. Wilson's speech at that meeting, Mawruss, in which he said that no longer should the select classes govern the rest of mankind, y'understand, and after the American, French, British, Italian, and Japanese delegates gets through applauding what Mr. Wilson says, they select themselves to run the rest of the nations in the League of Nations. Naturally an ex-minister like the Reverend Hyman is going to say, 'Why don't you practise what you preach?'"

"And if he wouldn't of been an ex-minister, Abe," Morris said, "the chances is that Chairman Clemenceau would of whispered a few words into the cauliflower ear of one of the sergeants-at-arms, and when the session closed, y'understand, the hat-check boy would have had one hat left over with the initials M. H. in it which Mr. Hyman didn't have time to claim before he hit the car tracks, y'understand, and I wouldn't blame Chairman Clemenceau, neither, because, if this here Peace Conference is going to end this side of nineteen-fifty, it's got to be speeded up some."

"I wouldn't blame Chairman Clemenceau neither, because if this here Peace Conference is going to end this side of nineteen fifty, it's got to be speeded up some."

"Nobody says it 'ain't," Abe agreed, "but this here M. Hyman is a Belgium and he's got a right to be heard."

"He would have if everybody didn't admit that Belgium shall be protected in every which way, Abe," Morris agreed, "but there is also a lot of small nations which has got delegates at the Peace Convention, like Cuba, y'understand, and some of them South American republics, and, once you begin with them fellers, where are you going to leave off? Take, for instance, the Committee on Reparation, which has got charge of deciding how much money Germany ought to pay for losses suffered by the countries which made war on her, y'understand, and there wasn't one of them Spanish-American republics which didn't want to get appointed on that committee, because, when the Reparation Committee gets to work, practically all of them republics is going to come along with claims for smoke damages, bills for labor in connection with ripping out the fixtures of confiscated German steamers, loss of services of the Presidents of such republics by reason of tonsillitis from talking about how bravely they would have fought if they had raised an army and navy which they didn't, y'understand, and any other claims against Germany which they think they might have had a chance to get by with."

"Well, of course there is bound to be a lot of them small republics which is going to make a play for a little easy money, Mawruss," Abe said, "but the indications is that when the proofs of claims is filed by the alleged creditors, y'understand, there would be a couple of them comma hounds on the Reparation Committee which would reject such claims on the grounds of misplaced semicolons alone. Then six months hafterwards, when the representative of one of them republics goes over to what used to was the office of the Peace Conference with a revised proof of claim, which he has just received by return mail, understand me, he would find the premises temporarily occupied by one of them crooked special-sale trunk concerns, and that's all there would be to it."

"Then you think that this here Peace Conference would only last six months, Abe?" Morris asked.

"Sure I do," Abe replied, "and less, even, because right now already the interest is beginning to die out, which it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, Mawruss, if in three weeks or so, when Mr. Wilson is temporarily out of the cast on account of going home to America to sign the new tax bill, y'understand, the attendance of the delegates would begin to fall off so bad, understand me, that the Peace Conference managers would got to spend a lot of money for putting in advertisements that George Clemenceau presents:

"And even then they wouldn't get an audience, Abe," Morris said, "because those kind of advertisements don't fool nobody but the suckers which pays for them, Abe."

"Maybe not," Abe agreed, "but if the delegates stays away, Mawruss, the Peace Conference could always get an audience by letting in the newspaper correspondents, which I don't care if in addition to Mr. Lord George and Colonel House they would got performing at this here Peace Conference Douglas Fairbanks and Caruso, it wouldn't be a success as a show, anyhow, because no theayter could get any audiences if they would make it a policy to bar out the newspaper crickets."

"Well, I'll tell you," Morris began. "Nobody likes to read in newspapers more than I do, Abe. They help to pass away many unpleasant minutes in the Subway when a feller would otherwise be figuring on if God forbid the brakes shouldn't hold what is going to become of his wife and children, y'understand; but, at the same time, from the way this here newspaper feller which hogs our cigars is talking, Abe, I gather that the big majority of newspaper reporters now in Paris has got the idea that this here Peace Conference is being held mainly to give newspaper reporters a chance to write home a lot of snappy articles about peace conferences, past and present. Although, of course, there is certain more or less liberal-minded newspaper men which think that if, incidentally, Mr. Wilson puts over the League of Nations and the Freedom of the Seas, why, they 'ain't got no serious objections, just so long as it don't involve talking the matter over privately without a couple of hundred newspaper reporters present."

"Sure, I know," Abe said; "but if them newspaper fellers has got such an idee, Mawruss, it is Mr. Wilson's own fault, because ever since we got into the war, y'understand, Mr. Wilson has been talking about open covenants of peace openly arrived at, and even before we went into the war he got off the words 'pitiful publicity,' and also it was him and not the newspaper men which first give the readers of newspapers to understand that the old secret diplomacy was a thing of the past, Mawruss, so the consequences was that, when Mr. Wilson come over here, the owners of newspapers sent to Paris everybody that was working for them—from dramatic crickets to baseball experts—just so long as they could write the English language, y'understand, because them newspaper-owners figured that, according to Mr. Wilson's own suggestions, this here Peace Conference was not only going to be a wide-open affair, openly arrived at, y'understand, but also pitifully public, whereas not only it ain't wide open, Mawruss, but it is about as pitifully public as a conference between the members of the financial committee of Tammany Hall on the day before Election. Also, Mawruss, a newspaper reporter could arrive at that Peace Conference openly or he could arrive at it disguised with false whiskers till his own wife wouldn't know him from a Jugo-Slob delegate, y'understand, and he couldn't get past the elevator-starter even."

"That was when the conference opened," Morris said; "but I understand they are now letting them into the next room and giving them once in a while a look through the door during the supper turns when the Polack and Servian delegates is performing."

"And that ain't going to do them a whole lot of good, neither," Abe declared, "because this here newspaper feller told me last night, when he was smoking my last cigar, that he has been mailing back an article a day to America ever since the President arrived here and there ain't not one of them which has got there yet."

"And I was reading in the America edition of the Paris edition of the London edition of the Manchester, England, Daily News that the newspaper correspondents couldn't only send back a couple of hundred words or so by telegraph, Abe," Morris said, "which the way it looks to me, Abe, if some news don't find its way back to America pretty quick about this here Peace Conference and Mr. Wilson, y'understand, people back home in Washington is going to say to each other, 'I wonder whatever become of this here—now—Wilson?' and the friend is going to say, 'What Wilson?' And the other feller would then say, 'Why, this here Woodruff Wilson.' And then the friend would say, 'Oh, him! Didn't he move away to Paris or something?' And the other feller would then say, 'I see where Benny Leonard put up a wonderful fight in Madison Square Garden yesterday,' and that's all there would be to that conversation."

"Maybe it is because of this, and not because of signing the new tax bill, that the President is going home in a few days for a short stay in America," Abe suggested.

"Sure, I know," Morris agreed; "but what good is them short visits going to do him, because I ain't such an optician like you are, Abe. I believe that this here Peace Conference is going to last a whole lot longer than six months, Abe, and, if Mr. Wilson keeps on going home and coming back, maybe the first time he goes back he would get some little newspaper publicity out of it, and the second time also, perhaps, but on the third when he returns from France only the Democratic newspapers would give him more as half a column about it, and later on, when he lands from his third to tenth trips, inclusive, all the notice the papers would take from it would be that in the ship's news on the ninth page there would be a few lines saying that among those returning on the S.S. George Washington was J. L. Abrahams, and so on through the B's, C's, and D's right straight down to the W's, which you would got to read over several times before you would discover the President tucked away as W. Wilson between two fellers named Max Wangenheim and Abraham Welinsky."

"There is something in what you say, Mawruss," Abe admitted; "but, at the same time, a big man like Mr. Wilson ain't looking to get no newspaper notoriety. He is working to become famous."

"Sure, I know," Morris said; "but the only difference between notoriety and fame is that with notoriety you get the publicity now, whereas with fame you get the publicity fifty years from now, and the publicity which Mr. Wilson is going to get fifty years from now ain't going to help him a whole lot in the next presidential campaign."

"Mr. Wilson ain't worrying about the next presidential campaign, Mawruss," Abe declared. "What he is trying to do is to make a success of this here Peace Conference."

"Then he would better get a press agent for it," Morris observed, "because, if they don't get some more publicity, it will die on its feet."

VI

"a whole lot of people is so badly predicted to the lapel button habit they join anything"

"But this here Legion of Honor must be a pretty good fraternal-insurance proposition at that," Morris observed, "because it says here in the paper where several New York bankers has gone into it, which it's a mighty hard thing to separate them fellers from their money even with first-class, A-number-one, gilt-edged, two-name commercial paper, and if this here Legion of Honor was just a lapel-button affair which assessed its members every time they had a death claim to pay, you could take it from me, Abe, not one of them bankers would of went near it, so maybe it would be a good thing if we looked into it, Abe."

"If you want to join this here Legion of Honor, that's your business, Mawruss," Abe said, "but I already belong to the Independent Order Mattai Aaron, which I've been paying them crooks for three years now that I should get a sick benefit fifteen dollars a week without being laid up with so much as tonsillitis even."

"About the sick benefit I wasn't thinking about at all," Morris declared; "but you take a feller like Sam Feder, president of the Kosciusko Bank, for instance, and if we should be maybe next year a little short and wanted an accommodation from two to three thousand dollars, y'understand, it wouldn't do us no harm if we could give him the L. of H. grip for a starter. Am I right or wrong?"

"Say!" Abe exclaimed. "The chances is that when them New York bankers gets back to New York they will want to forget all about joining this here L. of H."

"Why, what is there so disgraceful about joining the L. of H.?" Morris asked.

"Nobody said nothing about its being disgraceful, because lots of decent, respectable fellers is liable to make a mistake of that kind, understand me," Abe said; "but you take one of these here members of the firm of—we would say, for example, J. G. Morgan, y'understand, which comes back from Paris after joining this here L. of H., and what happens him? The first morning he comes down to the office wearing an L. of H. button, Mawruss, everybody from the paying-teller up is going to ask him what is the idea of the button, and he is going to spend the rest of the day listening to stories about people joining insurance fraternities which busted up and left the members with undetermined sentences of from three to five years, y'understand. The consequence would be that if any of his depositors expect to get an accommodation by giving him the L. of H. grip or wearing an L. of H. button, y'understand, they might just so well send him an invitation to a banquet where, in order to gain his confidence and respect, they are going to drink champagne out of an actress's slipper, and be done with it. Am I right or wrong?"

"Well, you couldn't exactly blame them fellers which joined the L. of H.," Morris observed, "because Paris has a very funny effect on some of the most level-headed Americans which goes there without their families and business associates, which if this here League of Nations had been fixed up at a Peace Conference held somewheres down on Lower Broadway instead of the Quai d'Orsay, Abe, the chances is that the United States Senate would of had a whole lot more confidence in it than they have at present."

"Say!" Abe explained. "This here League of Nations could of been pulled off in Paris or it could of been pulled off in a respectable neighborhood like Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, Mawruss, for all the spare time it gave the fellers which framed it to indulge in any wild night life. Take, for instance, the proposed constitution and by-laws, which was printed on three pages of the newspaper the other day, Mawruss, and anybody which dictated that megillah to a stenographer would be too hoarse for weeks afterwards to order so much as a plain Benedictine. Also, Mawruss, nobody which didn't lead a blameless life could have a brain clear enough to understand the thing, let alone composing it, which last night I sat up till two o'clock this morning reading them twenty-six articles, Mawruss, and ten grains of asperin hardly touched the headache which I got from it."

"Naturally," Morris said, "because when Mr. Wilson wrote that constitution, Abe, he figured that people which is going to read it has got a better education as one year in night school."

"Sure, I know," Abe agreed, satirically, "but at the same time everybody ain't such a natural-born Harvard gradgawate like you are, Mawruss, and furthermore, Mawruss, it's a big mistake for Mr. Wilson to go ahead on the idea that we are, y'understand, because, so far as I remember it, the Constitution of the United States didn't say that this was a government of the college gradgawates by the college gradgawates for the college gradgawates, y'understand; neither did the Declaration of Independence start in by saying, 'We, the college gradgawates of the United States,' Mawruss. The consequences is that most of us ingeramusses which has got one vote apiece, even around last November already, begun to feel neglected, and you could take it from me, Mawruss, if Mr. Wilson tries to win the confidence of the American people with a few more of them documents with the twin-six words in them, y'understand, by the time he gets ready to run for President again, Mawruss, the only people which is going to vote for him would be the Ph.D. and A.M. fellers."

"Well, Mawruss," Abe said, a few days after the conversation above set forth, "I see that President Wilson got back to America after a rough passage."

"Was he seasick?" Morris asked.

"Not a day," Abe replied.

"Then that accounts for it," Morris commented.

"Accounts for what?" Abe asked.

"Doctor Grayson being an admiral," Morris replied, "which a couple of years ago, when Mr. Wilson appointed Doctor Grayson to be an admiral over the heads of a couple of hundred fellers which had been captains of ships for years already, a lot of people got awful sore about it, and now it appears that he got the appointment because he can cure seasickness."

"I suppose if Doctor Grayson could cure locomotive ataxia the President would of appointed him Director-General of Railroads," Abe remarked.

"For my part, Abe," Morris said, "if I had a good doctor like Doctor Grayson attending me, and it was necessary to appoint him to something in order to keep him, Abe, I would appoint him a field-marshal, just so long as he could make me comfortable on an Atlantic trip in winter-time."

"But there isn't no office in the army or navy that President Wilson could appoint Doctor Grayson to which would have been a big enough reward if Doctor Grayson could have made the President feel comfortable in Washington when he got there, Mawruss," Abe said, "which I see by the paper this morning that thirty-seven United States Senators, coming from every state in the Union except Missouri, suddenly discovered they was from Missouri, in particular the Senator from Massachusetts, and not only does them Senators want to know what the meaning of that constitution of the League of Nations means, but they also give notice that, whatever it means, they are going to knife it, anyway."

"Sure, I know," Morris said; "they're like a lot of business men you and me has had experience with, Abe. They claim a shortage and kick about the quality of the shipment before they even start to unpack the goods. Why don't they wait till Mr. Wilson goes back and finishes up his job?"

"They haven't got the time," Abe replied, "because the session ends on March 4th at noon, just about twenty-four hours before Admiral Grayson is paying his first professional call on President Wilson aboard the George Washington, and by the time Congress gets together again President Wilson expects to have the League of Nations proposition sewed up so tight that there will be nothing left for them Senators to do but to indorse it."

"But, as I understand it, them Senators just loafed away their time during the end of the session and didn't pass a whole lot of laws which they should ought to have passed, Abe, so that it will be necessary for President Wilson to call an extra session in a few days," Morris said.

"That's what them Senators figured," Abe agreed, "but they was mistaken, Mawruss, because the President ain't going to run any chances of being interrupted while he is working on this here Peace Conference by S O S messages from Washington to please come home if he wants to save anything out of the wreck Congress is making of the inside of the Capitol."

"But I thought that before he went to Europe in the first place, Abe, President Wilson said to Congress that it wouldn't make any difference to them about his being in Europe, because he was in close touch with them, and that the cables and the wireless would make him available just as though he was still living in the White House," Morris said.

"Sure, I know," Abe agreed; "but the trouble with that situation was that it 'ain't been discovered by the inventors yet how a President can shake hands with a Senator by wireless or how he can sit down to dinner by wireless with a few Congressmen and make them feel that he is their one best friend. Also, Mawruss, it comes high even for a President to send cable messages to a Senator which he thinks is getting sore about something, such cable messages being in the nature of: 'Hello, Henry, what's the good word? Why is it I 'ain't seen you up to the White House lately, Henry?' or, 'Where have you been keeping yourself lately, Henry?' or, 'Mrs. Lodge and the children all right, Henry?' or something like that."

"Say, for that matter, Abe," Morris observed, "President Wilson never did a whole lot of jollying when he could have done it over the telephone at unlimited local-service rates. In fact, from what I have seen of Mr. Wilson, he looks to me like a man who would find it a whole lot easier to be easy in his manner toward Congressmen by wireless or by cable than face to face."

"Well, you couldn't blame Mr. Wilson exactly, Mawruss," Abe said, "because, up to the time he became Governor of New Jersey, his idea of being a good mixer was to get together with a couple of LL.D.'s and sit up till pretty near nine o'clock knocking the trustees, y'understand. In fact, up to the time he resigned from being president of Princeton College, life to Mr. Wilson was just correcting one examination paper after another, all of which 'ain't got nothing to do with this here League of Nations being a good thing, Mawruss," Abe declared.

"And it don't affect the fact that Mr. Wilson is a high-grade, A-number-one gentleman, which is doing the best he knows how to make good to his country, Abe," Morris declared.

"Did I say he wasn't?" Abe asked.

"Then what are you dragging up his past life for?" Morris demanded.

"What do you mean—dragging up his past life?" Abe rejoined. "The way you talk, Mawruss, you would think that being president of a college come in two degrees, like grand larceny, and had to be lived down through the guilty party getting the respect of the community by years of honest work."

"Say, lookyhere, Abe," Morris protested, "don't try to twist things around till it looks like I was knocking Mr. Wilson, and not you."

"I am knocking President Wilson!" Abe exclaimed. "Why, I've got the greatest respect for Mr. Wilson, and always did, Mawruss, but it would be foolish not to admit that the practice which a President of the United States gets in being a college professor is more useful to him in framing up a first-class, A-number-one League of Nations than it is in getting his political enemies to accept it. Am I wright or wrong?"

"Maybe he would have got them to accept it if he had stayed in touch with them personally and managed the Peace Conference by wireless and cable," Morris suggested.

"He probably figured that if he wanted to put over this here League of Nations it was more necessary for him to be on the job in France than on the job in America," Abe said.

"Well," Morris commented, "the next time the United States of America has a Peace Conference on its hands, Abe, the President will have to be a copartnership instead of an individual, with one member of the firm in Washington and the other in Paris."

"But what would Admiral Grayson do?" Abe asked. "He couldn't be in two places at the same time."

"Probably the Washington President could find a bright young physician in the Treasury Department," Morris concluded, "and promote him to the honorary title and salary of Comptroller of the Currency."

VII

"Well, I'll tell you," Morris said; "ordinarily, if the German people looked thin you would believe them. Also, before the war, if somebody went to Germany and people asked him when he come back how was the weather there, he didn't say, 'Unless they was putting one over on me, it was snowing,' y'understand, but to-day it's different. Nobody has got no confidence in the Germans nowadays. In fact, even the Germans themselves is losing confidence in them. Take Berlin, for instance, and every week the Spartacist, or Red, government has got the support of the people from 9:30 a.m. Tuesday until 6 p.m. Thursday, when the German people begins to lose confidence in them, so that by 8:30 a.m. Friday the Coalition, or Yellow, government comes into power. The Coalition, or Yellow, government then keeps the confidence of the people until Sunday midnight, when, under the influence of the Sunday night Ersat Delicatessen supper, the Germans starts in to suspect that everything ain't right with the Yellow government, neither, so back they go to the Red government, and they seize Police Headquarters, the Bureau of Assessments and Arrears, and desk room in the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Water-supply, Gas, and Electricity, and that's the way it goes."

"It's a funny thing to me why them colored German governments always starts a revolution by seizing Police Headquarters, Mawruss," Abe commented.

"That's the way they finance the revolution," Morris replied; "because I understand that the night life in Berlin has been going on the same as usual, revolution or no revolution, Abe, which I bet yer that as 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 Cæsar'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, while all the witnesses is in Paris, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get the March term of the Paris County grand jury to hand down an indictment for murder with intent to kill or something."

"That sounds reasonable to anybody not connected with this here Peace Conference, Abe," Morris admitted, "but it seems that the Committee for Fixing Responsibility says that if they was to hang or shoot the Kaiser it would give him an awful drag with the German people, and they don't want the Kaiser to get popular again, dead or alive. Their idea is to punish him by letting him live on to be an outcast among all the people of the earth, except the proprietors of first-class European hotels, dealers in high-grade automobiles, expensive jewelry storekeepers, fashionable tailors, and a couple of million other people who don't attach an awful lot of importance to the moral character of anybody which wants to enjoy life and has got the money to do it with. In other words, Abe, they claim that, in leaving the Kaiser to his conscience and his bank-account they are punishing him a whole lot worse as hanging him or shooting him."

"And I suppose that same committee is going to sentence von Tirpitz to six months at Monte Carlo, while Ludendorff will probably be confined to a Ritz hotel eight hours a day for the rest of his natural life," Abe suggested.

"The committee claims not," Morris replied. "It seems that the Kaiser's ministers—like von Tirpitz and Ludendorff—is going to get what is coming to them, on the grounds that they are guilty of violations of international law and 'ain't got no relations among the royal families of England or Italy."

"But why not bring the whole fleet over to America, and let the authorities dispose of them there?" Abe inquired.

"The Kaiser would be just as much a martyr if he was sentenced in America as in Europe," Morris replied.

"Who says anything about sentencing him?" Abe demanded. "All it would be necessary to do would be to swear out a warrant against him and leave the rest to a couple of headquarters detectives, which, naturally, when them fellers would tell him to come along with them, the Kaiser would technically resist the arrest by asking what for. This would mean at the very least ten stitches in his scalp, Mawruss, not reckoning a couple of broken ribs or so when the fingerprints was taken, and, while it wouldn't be only a starter in the way of punishment, he would anyhow find out that it is one thing to be actually engaged in a modern battle, and that looking at it through a high-power telescope while sitting in a bomb-proof limousine six miles away is absolutely something else again. Later on, Mawruss, when a New York police-court lawyer visited him in his cell after the Kaiser had lunched on bread and water and the police-court lawyer on what used to be called Koenigsburger Klops and is now known as Liberty Roast, understand me, the Kaiser would get just an inkling of what it means to be caught in a gas attack without a gas-mask."

"You talk like you would got a little experience in the way of sitting in prison yourself, Abe," Morris commented.

"I am giving you what practically happened to a feller by the name Immerglick which was arrested by mistake on account the police thought he looked like an Italian who was wanted for barrel murder, Mawruss," Abe exclaimed, "and if the police behaves this way to a perfect stranger which is innocent at that, Mawruss, you could imagine what them fellers would do to a well-known guilty party like the Kaiser. But that's neither here nor there, Mawruss. What I am trying to do is to work out a punishment proposition for the Kaiser which would get by with such a sensitive bunch as this here committee to place responsibility seems to be."

"Go ahead and have a good time with your pipe-dream, Abe," Morris said. "You couldn't make me feel bad, no matter what happens to the Kaiser in your imagination."

"Well," Abe continued, "after he is through with trying to get rid of the police-court lawyer, Mawruss, he should ought to be arranged before the magistrate in a traffic court, y'understand, and should be accused of driving at the rate of twenty-two miles an hour, which is two miles past the legal speed limit, and then he would find out that all them commandants of Ruhleben and the other German prison camps wasn't even new beginners in the art of making prisoners feel cheap, because you take one of these here traffic-court magistrates which has had years of experience bawling out respectable sitsons who has got the misfortune to own automobiles, Mawruss, and what such a feller wouldn't do to humilitate the Kaiser, y'understand, ain't even dreamt of in German prison camps yet."

"I see you still feel sore about getting fined twenty-five dollars for driving like a maniac down at Far Rockaway last summer Abe," Morris commented.

"How I feel or how I don't feel hain't got nothing to do with it, Mawruss," Abe retorted. "And furthermore, Mawruss, any motor-cycle policeman which has got the nerve to swear that he could tell inside of two miles an hour how fast somebody is driving, understand me, is guilty of perjury on the face of it, which I told the judge. 'Judge, your Honor,' I says, 'I admit I was going fast,' I says, 'but—'"

"Excuse me," Morris interrupted, "but I thought you was talking about how to punish the Kaiser, ain't it, which, while I admit you got some pretty good ideas on the subject, Abe, still at the same time there is plenty of ways that the Kaiser could get punished in America without going to the trouble and expense of arresting him first, Abe. There is a whole lot of experiences which the American people pays to go through just once, y'understand, which if the Kaiser could be persuaded to take them all on, one after the other, Abe, his worst enemies would got to pity him. Supposing, for instance, he would start off with one of them electric vibrating face massages, Abe, and if he comes through it alive, y'understand, he would then be hustled off to one of these here strong-arm bunkopathic physicians, which charges five dollars for the first visit and never has to quote rates for the second or third visits, because once is plenty, y'understand."

"But I thought the idea was not to let anybody have any sympathy for the Kaiser, Mawruss," Abe broke in.

"Plenty of fellers I know goes to these here near-doctors," Morris declared, "and nobody has got any sympathy for them, neither. Also, Abe, I 'ain't got no sympathy for anybody who goes to these here restaurants where they run off a cabarattel review, Abe, and yet it's a terrible punishment at that, so there's another tip for you if you want any more ideas for making the Kaiser suffer."

"Say, when it comes right down to it, Mawruss, and if you don't want to show the feller no mercy at all, y'understand," Abe said, "what's the matter with making him see some of them war plays they was putting on in New York last winter?"

"Why only war plays?" Morris asked. "I sat through a couple musical shows last winter without the option of a fine, y'understand, and it would be a good thing if the Kaiser could see performances like that—just to make him realize that in losing his throne, y'understand, he has no longer got the power to order the actors shot, together with the composer and the man that wrote the jokes."

"But the biggest punishment of all you 'ain't even hinted at yet," Abe said, "and it's a punishment which thousands of Americans is getting right now without no sympathy from nobody, which its name is:

"'Form 1040.   United States Internal Revenue Service

Individual Income Tax Return

For Net Incomes of More than $5,000

For Calendar Year, 1918.'

Also, Mawruss, when you consider what the Kaiser done, Mawruss, I ask you is it too much that the Committee on Fixing Responsibility should order him starved to death or talked to death or any other slow and painful death, because such a fate is going to be a happy one compared with the thousands of decent, respectable American business men which is headed straight for an insane-asylum, trying to fill out

"Well, after all, Abe," Morris said, "there's one worser punishment you could hand out the Kaiser than filling out this here income tax."

"What's that?" Abe inquired.

"Paying it," Morris said.

VIII

"Excuse me, Abe," Morris interrupted, coldly, "but who do you think this here Carter H. Glass is, anyway?"

"I don't know," Abe went on, "but whoever he is he probably figured that if he was going to get turned down he would anyhow get turned down big, because it says here in the paper that he cables Mr. Wilson he should please let him have three million dollars for this here Bureau for Paying Allowances to the Relations of Soldiers and—"

"Listen, Abe," Morris said, "if you wouldn't know who Carter H. Glass is after paying twelve per cent. on all you made over four thousand dollars last year, y'understand, nothing that I could say would ever learn you, so therefore I 'ain't got no expectations that you are going to remember it when I tell you that this here Carter H. Glass is Secretary of the Treasurer, and when he cabled Mr. Wilson for three million dollars, it ain't so hopeless like it sounds. Also, Abe, while Mr. Wilson gives it out to the papers that he got stung four thousand dollars for tips, it also appears in the papers that he came home with a few gold caskets and things, not to mention one piece of tapestry which the French government presented him with, valued at two hundred thousand dollars alone, y'understand, and if that kind of publicity is going to give Mr. Wilson a reputation as an easy giver-up, Abe, all I can say is that the collectors for orphan-asylums and homes don't read the papers no more carefully than you do, Abe."

"But why should the Secretary of the United States Treasury got to touch Mr. Wilson for?" Abe demanded. "Every day the people of the United States is paying into the United States Treasury millions and millions dollars income-tax money and all the President owns is a few gold caskets which he got presented with, and maybe a little tapestry, y'understand. What's the matter with that feller Carter H. Glass? Is he afraid he is going to run short if he spends a couple million dollars or so? Has he lost his nerve or something?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Abe," Morris began. "The Secretary of the Treasury 'ain't got such a cinch like some people think, y'understand. If the Bureau for Paying Allowances to the Relations of Soldiers send over and asks the Secretary of the Treasury to be so good and let 'em have for a few days three million dollars, understand me, you would naturally think that it is one of them dead open-and-shut, why-certainly propositions. The impression you have is that the Secretary grabs ahold of the 'phone and says to the head of stock to look on the third shelf from the elevator shaft is there any more of them million-dollar bills with the picture of Rutherford B. Hayes on 'em left, and if not, to send Jake up with three hundred of them three-by-seven-inch ten-thousand-dollar bills, and that's all there is to it. But as a matter of fact he doesn't do nothing of the kind, because nobody could get any money out of the Secretary of the Treasury except by an act of Congress."

"Well, it's nothing against Mr. Glass that he is such a tight-wad, Mawruss, because that's the kind of man to have as Secretary of the Treasurer, Mawruss, which supposing they had one of them easy-come, easy-go fellers for Secretary of the Treasurer, Mawruss—somebody who would fall for every hard-luck story he hears, y'understand, and how long is it going to be before the police is asking him what did he done with it all?" Abe said. "So, for my part, Mawruss, they could abuse Mr. Glass all they want to, y'understand, but I would be just as well satisfied, so far as my income taxes is concerned, if the only way you could get money out of him was by a miracle instead of an act of Congress. Am I right or wrong?"

"Do me the favor, Abe," Morris said, "and don't talk a lot of nonsense about a subject about which you don't know nothing about, because when I say that nobody could get money out of Carter H. Glass except by an act of Congress, y'understand, I ain't talking poetical in a manner of speaking. They must actually got to got and act of Congress before anybody could get any money out of the Secretary of the Treasury, no matter if Mr. Glass would be the most generous feller in existence, which, for all I know, he might be. So, therefore, Abe, when Congress adjourned without passing the acts which was necessary in order that the Secretary of the Treasury should pay the railroads seven hundred and fifty million dollars to keep 'em going, y'understand, not to mention such chicken-feed like three million dollars for this here Soldiers' Relations Bureau and the like, it leaves the country practically broke with seven or eight billion dollars in the bank. Now do you understand what I am driving into?"

"I think I do," Abe said, "but explain it to me just as if I didn't, because what is a mystery to me is, why did Congress adjourn without passing them acts, Mawruss?"

"They did it to put Mr. Wilson in bad on account he went to Europe without calling an extra session," Morris said.

"I thought Congress got paid by the year and not by the session," Abe remarked.

"So they do," Morris continued, "but they said they wanted to stay in session while Mr. Wilson was in Europe to help him, and Mr. Wilson thought they wanted to stay in session while he was in Europe to knock him, and he said: 'Watch! I'll fix them fellers,' and they said: 'Watch! We'll fix that feller.' And between the two of them, the railroads is left dry and high, the War Risks Bureau claims that they could only keep going for a week or so, the Soldiers' Relations people is sending out J O S signals, and that's the way it goes."

"And who do you think is right, Mawruss?" Abe asked. "Mr. Wilson or Congress?"

"Well, I ain't exactly prepared to say, y'understand," Morris replied, "but it's a question in my mind whether or not there ain't just so much need for a Peace Conference in Washington as there is in Paris, and if so, Abe, whether Mr. Wilson ain't at the wrong Peace Conference."

"So far as that goes, Mawruss," Abe said, "he might just so well be in Washington as in Paris, because the tapestry and gold-casket period of this here Conference is already a thing of the past, which I see that Mr. Wilson ain't even staying with the Murats no longer."

"Naturally," Morris said, "after the way this here Murat went around talking about the League of Nations."

"Why, I thought he was in favor of it!" Abe said.

"He was in favor of it," Morris said, "up to the time Mr. Wilson and Lord George had the conference with the Jugo-Slobs where they laid out the frontiers by making the ink-bottle represent Bessarabia and the mucilage-bottle Macedonia. When Murat saw the library carpet the next morning, he began to say that, after all, why shouldn't France control her own foreign policy."

"I don't blame him," Abe commented.

"Later on the Polish National Committee called on Mr. Wilson and was shown into the parlor before the butler had a chance to put the slip covers on the furniture," Morris continued, "and that very evening Murat went around saying that if France was going to have to police the corridor through West Prussia to Dantzig, he was against articles fourteen to twenty, both inclusive, of the League constitution, and where could he find a good dry-cleaner."

"That don't surprise me, neither," Abe remarked.

"But it wasn't till the President's body-guard of secret-service men had an all-night stud-poker session in the yellow guest-room that he actually made speeches against the League of Nations," Morris went on, "and at that, the room 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 United States is going to think in the fall of 1920 as what they are going to wear in the fall of 1920, which it would of been a whole lot better for the general's prospects if he would of said that Grover Cleveland was just as expert at verbal messages as another great American and believed just as strongly in a League of Nations. In fact, Abe, if there was, Heaven forbid, a chance of me being nominated for President in 1920, I would lay pipes for claiming that it was me that suggested the whole idea of the League of Nations to President Wilson in the first place. Am I right or wrong?"

"You're right about the Heaven forbid part, anyway," Abe commented.

"Because," Morris continued, as though he had not heard the interruption, "what between the people who are willing to take President Wilson's word for it and the people who ain't willing to take a United States Senator's word for anything, y'understand, this here League of Nations looks like a pretty safe proposition for any politician to tie up to, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if even some of them Senators which signed the round robin would be claiming just before the 1920 National Conventions that they was never what you might call actually against a League of Nations except, as one might say, in a manner of speaking, if you know what I mean. Also, Abe, these here Senators which is now acting like they would have sworn a solemn oath, in addition to the usual amount of swearing about such things, that they would never ratify this here League of Nations, y'understand, are already beginning to say that they wouldn't ratify it anyhow in its present form, understand me, and before they got through, Abe, you could take it from me, that when it finally comes up for ratification them same Senators is going to go over it again carefully and find that it has been amended by inserting two commas in Article two and a semicolon in Article twenty-five, and a glad shout of 'Oh, well, this is something else again!' will go up, understand me, and after they vote to unanimously ratify it they will be telling each other that all you have to do is to make a firm stand against Mr. Wilson and he will back right down."

"The way it looks to me, Mawruss," Abe commented, "the back-down is on the other foot."

"It's fifty-fifty, Abe, because, when the President gets his back up, the Senate starts to back down," Morris concluded, "and vice versa."

IX

"If Poland could do it, Abe, why couldn't Italy?" Morris said. "Which Paderewski didn't have to tune pianos on the side to make a living over here, neither, Abe, and, besides, Abe, if they would let Caruso have a free hand in the formation of his Cabinet, he would probably get a good barytone for Secretary of State, a basso for Secretary of Commerce and Labor, De Luca for Secretary of the Treasury, Martinelli for Secretary of War, and draw on the Chicago Opera Company for Secretaries of the Navy, the Interior, and Agriculture. After that, Abe, all the Italian government would got to do would be to move the capital to Milan and hold open sessions of the Cabinet at the Scala with a full orchestra, and they could take in from ten to twenty thousand dollars at the door, daily, in particular if they was to advertise that Caruso would positively appear at every session of the Cabinet, y'understand."

"But, joking to one side, Mawruss," Abe declared, "while personally I got to admit that up to a short time ago, for all I knew about Fiume, y'understand, if somebody would of said to me suddenly, 'Fiume,' I would have said, 'Fiume yourself, you dirty loafer!' and the chances is there would have been a fight then and there, understand me. Still, I couldn't help thinking that as between old friends like the Italians and perfect strangers like the Jugo-Slobs, y'understand, Italy should ought to have Fiume and anything else she wants within reason and even a couple of places not within reason, if she wants them that bad."

"In deciding these things, Abe," Morris said, "Mr. Wilson couldn't consider prejudice."

"No?" Abe retorted. "Well, could he consider who discovered America? A Jugo-Slob, I suppose, what? But never mind going so far back as Christopher Columbus, Mawruss. Take our best workmen right in our own shop, Mawruss—them Tonies and them Roccos with all the time a pleasant smile no matter how hard we work them, and what are they? Jugo-Slobs or Italians? Take it in the city of New York alone, and do we get there half a million Jugo-Slobs or half a million Italians? I am asking you? Also, Mawruss, I suppose the American people is crazy to see Jugo-Slob opera, with wonderful Jugo-Slob singers and composed by Jugo-Slob composers, ain't it? Furthermore, Mawruss, when you want to give your wife a treat, you take her out and blow her to a good Jugo-Slob table d'hôte, one dollar and a half including wine—what?"

"Listen, Abe," Morris protested, "I didn't say a word that Italy shouldn't have Fiume."

"I know you didn't," Abe said, "but there's a whole lot of people which does, Mawruss, and how they expect to use it for an argument to get the millions of Italians in America to subscribe to the next Victory Loan, Mawruss, may be perfectly clear to them, Mawruss, but I couldn't see it and I doubt if them millions of Italians will be able to see it, neither."

"Probably you ain't wrong exactly," Morris said, "but whichever way Mr. Wilson thinks is the best for the good of Europe, Abe, that's the way he would decide it about Fiume."

"Well, I'll tell you, Mawruss," Abe observed, "while I consider that Europe, excepting the coffee they give you for breakfast, is a high-grade continent, taking it by and large, still at the same time I ain't so fanatical about it that if I would be President Wilson, I wouldn't once in a while give America a look-in also. Furthermore, Mawruss, admitting that Mr. Wilson is acting wonderful in the way he is unselfish about America, y'understand, and that he would probably go down in history as a great and good man, y'understand, he should ought to watch out that he don't act too unselfish about America, Mawruss, otherwise he would be going down as a great and good man in French and English history and not in American history."

"There is even some people which figures that he would be a great man in the history of the world even," Morris interrupted.

"Sure, I know," Abe said, "and that's the trouble with a whole lot of people these days, Mawruss. They are figuring on world propositions, and what goes on in the next block don't interest them at all. Worrying should begin at home, Mawruss, whereas with them world thinkers they couldn't get really and truly anxious about the way things is going anywheres nearer to the Woolworth Building than the Nevski Prospekt. 'Ain't you ashamed of yourselves to be kicking about not having a job,' they says to the returning American soldiers, 'when thousands of muzhiks in Ukrania is idle.' And they go to work and collect dollar after dollar for milk to feed Czecho-Slovak babies, with sixty cents after sixty cents overhead on the collection, y'understand, while right here in New York City families with an income of eighteen dollars a week has got to pay twenty cents a quart for grade B milk when the milk-wagon drivers ain't on strike."

"People has become European-Americans from reading too much newspapers nowadays, Abe," Morris said, "which in these times of one newspaper trying to show the others how much more money it is spending for foreign cables, y'understand, if you want to see who is murdered in your own town, understand me, you are liable to find a couple of lines about it 'most any part of the paper except in the first four pages, and the consequences is that people gets the impression from reading the papers that a strike in Berlin is ever so much more important than a strike in Hoboken for the simple reason that as the Berlin strike cost the newspaper proprietor several hundred dollars for cables, he put it on the front page, whereas the strike in Hoboken only cost him seven cents car fare for the reporter each way, and therefore it gets slipped in on the eleventh page with over it the head-line: 'Plan American Orchestra. Chicago's New Philharmonic Is Headed by Mrs. J. Ogden Armour,' the orchestra story with the strike head-line having failed to get into the paper at all."

"Well, I'll tell you," Abe said, "people which reads the newspapers don't take the same amount of interests in strikes like they once used to did before the United States government organized them Conciliation and Arbitration Boards, which nowadays strikes is long, dull affairs consisting of the first strike, the arbitration, the decision, the second strike, the arbitration, the decision, the third strike, and so on for several months, because that's the trouble with arbitration, Mawruss: everybody is willing to arbitrate and nobody is willing to be decided against."

"Also strikes is becoming too common, Abe," Morris said. "Everybody is going on strike nowadays, from milk-wagon drivers to the United States Senate, and although the last strike only begun as a strike and ended up as a lock-out, y'understand, still the example wasn't good to the country, which if the strike fever is going to spread as high up as the United States Senate, Abe, where is it going to stop? The first thing you know, the members of the Metropolitan Club will be going on strike for a minimum of six hundred sturgeon eggs in a ten-dollar portion of fresh Astrakhan caviar, and the Amalgamated Bank Presidents of America, New York Local No. 1, will be walking out in a body for a minimum wage of fifty thousand dollars a year, with a maximum working year of four months."

"But even when strikes had no foreign competition in the newspapers, Mawruss," Abe said, "the interest in them soon died out, which very few people outside the parties concerned ever finds out when a strike ends or who wins, and you might even say gives a nickel one way or the other, Mawruss."

"It ain't only strikes which affects people like that, Abe," Morris commented. "Long-drawn-out murder trials and graft investigations also suffers that way, which I bet yer the American newspaper-reading people will soon get on to the fact that the newspapers is playing up to their cable tolls, y'understand, and everybody will be starting in to read the paper at the fourth or fifth page."

"Still, I think that considerable interest was revived in the League of Nations and the Peace Conference by the argument that Senator Lodge put up last week in Lowell, Massachusetts," Abe said.

"It wasn't in Lowell, but with Lowell," Morris corrected.

"In or with," Abe said, "it caused a whole lot of comment in the newspapers, and the people which bought the next morning them papers that printed the whole affair in full, Mawruss, skipped as much as two or three pages about it."

"Well, they didn't miss much, Abe," Morris said, "because it didn't come up to the advertisement."

"What do you mean—the advertisement?" Abe inquired.

"Why, for days already, the newspapers come out with a notice that Senator Lodge would argue with this here Lowell, which he is a college president and not a town, Abe, the argument to take place in a big hall in Boston, and the application for tickets was something tremendous, Abe, because you know how arguments about the League of Nations is, Abe. Sometimes the parties only use language and sometimes the smaller one of the two goes to a hospital, understand me. But, however, in this case it must be that the friends of Senator Lodge must have went to him and said: 'What do you want to get into an argument with Lowell for? Treat him with contempt. What do you care what he says about you? You are doch a United States Senator, ain't it?' And the friends of this here Lowell also must have went to him and said: 'Listen, Lowell, don't make a show of yourself. If Lodge wants to behave himself that way, all right; he's only a United States Senator, but you are anyhow president of Harvard College, and you can't afford to act that way.' 'Act what way?' Lowell probably said. 'Do you think I am going to sit down and let him walk all over Wilson, which Wilson and me was presidents of colleges together for years already?'"

"And besides a college president don't make such big money that he could afford to sneeze at his share of the gate receipts, neither," Abe commented.

"Be that as it may," Morris said, "they probably figured that it was too late to call the thing off, but their friends must have got them together and talked Lodge over into behaving like a gentleman, because he practically agreed to everything that Lowell said and, so to speak, 'threw' the whole debate right at the outset, which, reading the reports in the newspapers next morning, Abe, it is a wonder to me that the referee or the umpire didn't stop it before it had gone the first five minutes, even."

"Well, if people is foolish enough to bet on such things, Mawruss," Abe commented, "they deserve to lose, ain't it?"

"So the consequences is that some people is now saying that Senator Lodge backed down because he didn't have a leg to stand on," Morris continued, "while them people which probably made a little easy money on Lowell is saying, 'Yow! backed down!' and that Lowell is a crackerjack, A-number-one arguer, and won the argument on his merits, y'understand."

"The whole thing should ought to be investigated by the Massachusetts Boxing Commission in order to see that them kind of disgraceful exhibitions shouldn't occur again," Abe said, "otherwise this here James Butler which is president of Columbia College will fix up an argument with another United States Senator, and whoever is now president of Princeton College will arrange a frame-up with a Governor of a state or somebody, and the first thing you know, Mawruss, college presidents will be getting such a reputation as public speakers that the next Republican National Convention will be again unloading a college president on us as President of the United States."

"Say," Morris protested, "if all college presidents would make as good a President as Mr. Wilson done, Abe, I am content that we should have such a president for President."

"President Wilson done all right, Mawruss," Abe declared. "He done a whole lot to add a touch of refinement to what otherwise would of been a very rough war, understand me. He's got the respect and admiration of the whole world, Mawruss, and I ain't going to say but neither, but would say however. Mawruss, for the next ten years or so the United States of America ain't going to be as quiet as a college exactly. Maybe the presidents of colleges will continue to deal with college professors and college students which couldn't talk back, Mawruss, but the next President of the United States will have to stand an awful lot of back-talk from a whole lot of people about taxes, business conditions, railroads, and so forth, and instead of coming right back with a snappy remark originally made by some big Roman philosopher and letting it go at that, Mawruss, he would got to come right back with a plan devised by some big Pittsburgh business man and act on it, too."