ero promptly on the first of November, writes to tell you that he must
say he is surprised, as the winter-weight garments which you shipped him
ain't nowheres up to sample and is holding same at your disposal and
remain, which if the government would come down on him for a hundred
dollars, he is practically getting off with a warning. And I could think
of a lot of other excess-postage cases, too, but, as I understand it,
we are only trying to raise forty billion dollars, Mawruss."

"Don't let that stop you, Abe," Morris said, "because there's going to
be plenty of extras over and above the original estimate, which I see
that a lot of South American countries is coming into the war and it's
only a question of a month or so when we would have calling on us a
commission from Peru, a commission from Chile, a commission from
Bolivia, a commission from Paraguay, and all of them with the same
hard-luck story, that if they only had a couple of billion dollars they
could put an army of five hundred thousand soldiers into the field, if
they only had five hundred thousand soldiers."

"Just the same, Mawruss," Abe said, "them countries is going to be a lot
of help."

"And when we get through paying the help, y'understand, we've still got
to raise money for the family to live on," Morris said, "so go ahead
with your suggestion, Abe. Maybe there's some taxes which Congress
'ain't thought of yet."

"Well, there's this here free speech, which, instead of being free,
Mawruss, if it was subject to a tax of one dollar per soap-box hour,
payable strictly in advance, y'understand, so far as the pacifists is
concerned, you would be able to hear a pin drop. Even Congressmen would
soon get tired of paying from twenty to twenty-four dollars a day,
especially if the government made it a stamp tax."

"LaFollette would be covered mit stamps from head to foot," Morris
remarked.

"That would suit me all right," Abe said, "particularly if the collector
of internal revenue was to run him with stamps affixed through a
cancellation-machine and cancel him good and proper."

IV

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON BERNSTORFF'S EXPENSE ACCOUNT

Here he is coming back from his trip after losing his whole territory
to his firm's competitors, and naturally he tries to make a good
showing with his expense account.

"I see where the government puts a limit on the price which coal-dealers
could charge for coal," Abe Potash said to his partner,