d
ships that in reply to your favor of the tenth inst. would say that we
expect to ship the ships not later than July first at the latest, and
oblige."

"But I thought that even before we went to war with Germany, Mawruss, a
couple of inventors made it an invention of a ship which could be built
of yellow pine in ninety days net."

"Sure, I know," Morris said. "But the Shipping Commission couldn't make
up their minds whether them yellow-pine ships would be any good even
after they _were_ built, on account some professional experts claimed
that yellow pine shrinks in water to the extent of .00031416 milliegrams
to the kilowatt-hour, or .000000001 per cent., and other professional
experts said, '_Yow_ .00031416 milliegrams!' and that .00000031416 would
be big already, and that also what them first experts didn't know from
the shrinkage of yellow pine, understand me."

"Well, why didn't the Shipping Commission build a sample ship from
yellow pine?" Abe suggested. "It's already nine months since the war
started, and by this time such a ship could have been in the water long
enough for them Shipping Commission fellers to judge which experts was
right."

"And suppose she did shrink a little," Morris said, "she could have been
anyhow disposed of '_as is_' to somebody who didn't take it so
particular to the fraction of an inch how much yellow pine he gets in a
yellow-pine ship."

"I give you right, Mawruss," Abe agreed, "but then, you see, an idee
like that would never occur to a professional expert, Mawruss, because
it has the one big objection that it might prove the other experts was
right when they didn't agree with him, which that is the trouble with
professional experts. The important thing to them ain't so much the
articles on which they experts, as what big experts they are on such
articles.

"Take this here Lewis machine-gun, Mawruss," Abe continued, "and when
Colonel Lewis puts it up to the army experts, y'understand, naturally
them experts says, 'Well, if we are such big experts on machine-guns, we
should ought to know a whole lot more about machine-guns as Colonel
Lewis, and what does that _Schlemiel_ know about machine-guns,
_anyway_?' so they sent Colonel Lewis a notice that they would not be
responsible for goods left over thirty days, and the consequence was
Colonel Lewis sold his machine-gun to the English army."

"And he didn't have to be such a cracker-jack high-grade A-number-one
salesman to do tha