Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things. Glass Montague

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СКАЧАТЬ you no longer.' So that's why I say if they would have let him go to his hotel first, y'understand, why, then he—"

      "But Mr. and Mrs. Wilson ain't putting up at no hotel. They are staying with a family by the name of Murat," Morris explained.

      "Relations to the Wilsons maybe?" Abe inquired.

      "Not that I heard tell of," Morris replied.

      "Well, whoever they are they've got my sympathy," Abe said; "because once, when the Independent Order Mattai Aaron held its annual Grand Lodge meeting in New York, me and Rosie put up the Grand Master, by the name Louis M. Koppelman, used to was Koppelman & Fine, the Fashion Store, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and the way that feller turned the house upside down, if he would have stayed another week with us, understand me, I would have hired a first-class A number one criminal lawyer to defend me and wired the relations for instructions as to how to ship the body home."

      "I bet yer the Murats feel honored to got Mr. and Mrs. Wilson staying with them," Morris said.

      "For the first few days maybe," Abe admitted, "but wait till a couple weeks go by! I give them until January 1, 1919, and after that Mr. and Mrs. Murat would be signaling each other to come up-stairs into the maid's room and be holding a few ain't-them-people-got-no-home conversations. Also, Mawruss, for the rest of their married life, Mawruss, every time the tropic of who invited them in the first place comes up at meal-times, y'understand, either Mr. or Mrs. Murat is going to get up from the table and lock themselves up in the bedroom for the remainder of the evening. Am I right or wrong?"

      "I wouldn't argue with you," Morris said, "because if I would give you the slightest encouragement you are liable to go to work and figure where Mrs. Murat is kicking to Mr. Murat that she couldn't make out with the housekeeping money while the Wilsons is in Paris, on account of having to buy an extra bottle of Grade B milk every day, or something like that, which you talk like Mr. and Mrs. Wilson was in Paris on a couple of weeks' vacation, whereas the President has come here to settle the peace of the world."

      "Did I say he didn't?" Abe protested.

      "And while you are sitting here talking a lot of nonsense," Morris went on, "big things is happening, which with all the questions he has got to think about, I bet yer the President oser worries his head about a little affair like board and lodging. Also I read in one of them Paris editions of an American paper that there come over to France on the same steamer with him over three hundred experts—college professors and the like—and them fellers is now staying in Paris at various hotels, which, if that don't justify Mr. Wilson in putting up with a private family, y'understand, I don't know what does!"

      "I thought at the time I read about them experts coming over to help the President in the Peace Conference that he was letting himself in for something," Abe observed.

      "I bet yer!" Morris said. "And that's where Colonel House was wise when he comes over on a steamer ahead of them, because it is bad enough when you are crossing the ocean in winter-time to be President of the United States and to have to try not to act otherwise, without having three hundred experts dogging your footsteps and thinking up ways to start a conversation and swing it towards the subject they are experts in. Which I bet yer every time the President tried to get a little exercise by walking around the promenade deck after lunch there was an expert on Jugo-Slobs laying for him who was all worked up to tell everything he knew about Jugo-Slobs in a couple of laps, provided the President lasted that long."

      "Well, I'll tell you," Abe said, "a man which employs experts to ask advice from deserves all he gets, Mawruss, because you know how it is when you ask an advice from somebody which don't know a thing in the world about what he is advising you. He'll talk you deaf, dumb, and blind, anyhow. So you can imagine what it must be like when you are getting advice from an expert!"

      "It seems to me that before the President gets through he will be looking around for an expert which is expert in choking off advice from experts, otherwise the first time the President consults one of them experts, if he's going to wait for the expert to get through, he will have to be elected to a third term and then maybe hold over, at that," Morris commented.

      "I should think the President would be glad when this Peace Conference is over," Abe said.

      "Say! For that matter he'll be glad when it's started," Morris said. "Which the way it looks now, Abe, the preliminaries of a peace conference is harder on a President in the way of speeches and parades than two Liberty Loan campaigns and an inauguration. Take, for instance, the matter of dinners, and I bet yer before he even goes to London next week he would have six meals with the President of France alone—I can't remember his name."

      "Call him Lefkowitz," Abe said, "I'll know who you mean."

      "Well, whatever it is, he looks like a hearty eater, Abe," Morris remarked.

      "In fact, Mawruss, from what I seen of them French politicians in the parade this morning," Abe observed, "none of them looked like they went slow on starchy foods and red meats, whereas take the American Peace Commissioners, from the President down, and while they don't all of them give you the impression that they eat breakfast food for dinner exactly, still at the same time if these here peace preliminaries is going to include more dinners than parades, the French Commissioners has got them under a big handicap."

      "Maybe you're right," Morris agreed. "But my idee is that with these here preliminary peace dinners it ain't such a bad thing for us if our Peace Commissioners wouldn't be such hearty eaters, y'understand, because you know how it is when we've got a hard-boiled egg come into the place to look over our line, it's a whole lot better to get an idee of about how much he expects to buy after lunch than before, in especially if we pay for the lunch. So if this here President Lefkowitz, or whatever the feller's name is, expects to fill up the President with a big meal of them French à la dishes until Mr. Wilson gets so good-natured that he is willing to tell not only his life history, but also just exactly what he means by a League of Nations, y'understand, the dinner might just as well start and end with two poached eggs on toast, 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!" СКАЧАТЬ