ance to prove it. We
wouldn't be away longer as six weeks at the outside, so go ahead, Abe.
Here is the application for the passport. Sign your name on the dotted
line and don't say no more about it."

* * * * *

"Yes, Mawruss," Abe said, three weeks later, as they sat in the
restaurant of their Paris hotel, "in a country where the coffee pretty
near strangles you, even when it's got cream and sugar in it,
y'understand, the cooking has _got_ to be good, because in a
two-dollar-a-day American plan hotel the management figures that no
matter how rotten the food is, the guests will say, 'Well, anyhow, the
coffee was good,' and get by with it _that_ way."

"On the other hand, Abe," Morris suggested, "maybe the French hotel
people figure that if they only make the coffee bad enough, the guests
would say, 'Well, one good thing, while the food is terrible, it ain't a
marker on the coffee.'"

"But the food tastes pretty good to me, Mawruss," Abe said.

"Wait till you've been here a week, Abe," Morris advised him. "Anything
would taste good to you after what you went through on that boat."

"What do you mean--after what _I_ went through?" Abe demanded. "What I
went through don't begin to compare with what you went through, which
honestly, Mawruss, there was times there on that second day out where
you acted so terrible, understand me, that rather as witness such human
suffering again, if any one would of really and truly had your interests
at heart, they would of give a couple of dollars to a steward that he
should throw you overboard and make an end of your misery."

"Is _that_ so!" Morris retorted. "Well, let me tell you something, Abe.
If you think _I_ was in a bad way, don't kid yourself, when you lay
there in your berth for three days without strength enough to take off
even your collar and necktie, y'understand, that the captain said to the
first officer ain't it wonderful what an elegant sailor that Mr. Potash
is or anything _like_ it, understand me, which on more than one occasion
when I seen the way you looked, Abe, I couldn't help thinking of what
chances concerns like the Equ_itta_ble takes when they pass a feller as
A number one on his heart and kidneys, and ain't tried him out on so
much as a Staten Island ferry-boat to see what kind of a traveler he
is."

"Listen, Mawruss," Abe interrupted, "did we come over here paying
first-class fares for practically steerage accommodation