ness,
y'understand."

"Well, that's the way the Czar figured," Morris commented. "For, Abe,
the Kaiser has got an idee years already he was running Russland on the
open-shop principle, and before he woke up to the fact that the people
he had been treating right straight along as non-union labor was really
the majority stockholders, y'understand, they had changed the
combination of the safe on him and notified the bank that on and after
said date all checks would be signed by Jacob M. Kerensky as receiver."

"You would think a feller like the Czar would learn something by what
happened to this here Mellen of the New Haven Railroad," Abe said.

"_Yow_ learn!" Morris replied. "Is the Kaiser learning something from
what they done to the Czar?"

"That's a different matter entirely," Abe retorted. "With a relation by
marriage, you naturally figure if he makes a big success that he fell in
soft and that a lucky stiff like him if he gets shot with a gun,
y'understand, the bullet is from gold and it hits him in the pocket yet;
whereas, if he goes broke and 'ain't got a cent left in the world,
y'understand, it's a case of what could you expect from a _Schlemiel_
like that. So instead of learning anything from what happens to the
Czar, I bet yer the Kaiser feels awful sore at him yet. Why, I don't
suppose a day passes without the Kaiser's wife comes to him and says,
'Listen, Popper, Esther (or whatever the Czar's wife's name is) called
me up again this morning; she says Nicholas 'ain't got no work nor
nothing and she was crying something terrible.'

"'Well, if she's going to keep on crying till I find that loafer a job,'
the Kaiser says, 'she's got a long wet spell ahead of her.'

"'She don't want you to find him no job,' the Kaiser's wife tells him.
'All she asks is you should send 'em transportation.'

"'Transportation _nothing_!' the Kaiser says. 'I already sent
transportation to the King of Greece, Ambassador Bernstorff, Doctor
Dernburg, this here boy Ed _und Gott weisst wer nach_. What am I? The
Pennsylvania Railroad or something?'

"'Well, what is he going to do 'way out there in Tobolsk?' she says.

"'If he would only of acted reasonable and killed off a couple million
of them suckers, the way any other king would do, he never would of had
to go to Tobolsk at all,' the Kaiser says.

"'_Aber_ what shall I say to her if she rings up again?' she asks.

"'Say what you please,' the Kaiser answers her, 'but tell Centr