oes to work
and recommends the government to give an inventor an order for his
invention, he's taking a big chance that the invention wouldn't work,
and you know as well as I do, Abe, most American experts play in
terrible hard luck. You take these here military experts which gives
expert opinions in the newspapers about what is going to happen next on
the Balkan front, y'understand, and a feller could make quite a
reputation as a military expert by simply coppering their predictions."

"Well, them military experts which writes in the newspapers ain't really
experts at all, Mawruss," Abe said. "They're just crickets, like them
musical crickets which knows everything there is to know about, we would
say, for example, playing on the fiddle excepting how to play on the
fiddle."

"_Aber_ what is the difference between a professional expert and a
professional cricket, _anyway_?" Morris asked.

"A professional expert is a feller which thinks he knows all about a
business because he tried for years and he never could make a success of
it," Abe replied, "whereas a professional cricket is a feller which
thinks he knows all about a business because he tried for years and he
could never even break into it."

"And how could you expect to get from people like that an opinion which
ain't on the bias?" Morris concluded.

XIII

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON BEING AN OPTICIAN AND LOOKING ON THE BRIGHT
SIDE

"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said as he laid down the morning paper after
glancing over the alarming head-lines, "a feller which has got stomach
trouble or the toothache nowadays is playing in luck, because when
you've got stomach trouble you couldn't think about nothing else, and
what is a little thing like stomach trouble to worry over with all the
_tzuris_ which is happening in the world nowadays?"

"Well, then _have_ stomach trouble," Morris Perlmutter advised.

"What do you mean--_have_ stomach trouble?" Abe said. "A man couldn't
get stomach trouble the same way he could get drunk, Mawruss. It is
something which is just so much beyond your control as red hair or a
good tenor voice."

"Sure, I know," Morris agreed. "But what is happening in Russia and
Italy is also beyond your control, Abe, so if them Bolsheviki is getting
on your nerves, and you hate to pick up the paper for fear of finding
that the Germans would have captured Venice, understand me, console
yourself with the idee that there's a lot of brainy feller