ect them
millionaires no more than if, instead of being the greatest tenor in the
world, he would be an Interstate Commerce Commissioner. On the other
hand, them top-gallery fellers treats him like a little god,
y'understand, which if Caruso hands them opera fans a high C, Mawruss,
it's the equivalence of Dun or Bradstreet giving one of them box-holders
an A-a."

"Maybe you're right, Abe," Morris said, "but how do you account for
people paying forty dollars for an orchestra seat at the Lexington
Opera House just to hear this singer Galli-Curci in one performance
only, which I admit I ain't no advertising expert, Abe, but it seems to
me that if anybody is going to get benefit from publicity like that he
might just so well circulate a picture of himself drinking champanyer
wine out of a lady's satin slipper and be done with it, for all the good
it is going to do him with the National Association of Credit Men."

"That is another angle of the grand-opera proposition, Mawruss," Abe
said. "Paying forty dollars for an orchestra seat to hear this lady with
the Lloyd-George name is the same like an operation for appendicitis to
some people, Mawruss. It not only makes them feel superior to their
friends which 'ain't had the experience, but it gives 'em a tropic of
conversation which is never going to be barred by the statue of
limitations, and for months to come such a feller is going to go round
saying, 'Well, I heard Galli-Curci the other night,' and it won't make
no difference if it's a pinochle game, a lodge funeral, or a real-estate
transaction, he's going to hold it up for from fifteen minutes to half
an hour while he talks about her upper register, her middle register,
and her lower register to a bunch of people who don't know whether a
coloratura soprano can travel on a sleeper south to Washington, D.C., or
has to use the Jim Crow cars."

"All right, if it's such a crime not to know what a coloratura soprano
is, Abe," Morris commented, "I'm guilty in the first degree. So go
ahead, Abe. I'm willing to take my punishment. Tell me, what _is_ a
coloratura soprano?"

"I suppose you think I don't know," Abe said.

"I don't think you don't know," Morris replied, "but I do think that the
only reason you _do_ know, Abe, is that you 'ain't looked it up long
enough since to have forgotten it."

"Is _that_ so!" Abe exclaimed. "Well, that's where you make a big
mistake. I am already an experienced hand at going on the opera. W