a disgrace the way every little secretary in the President's Cabinet
is gallivanting half over Europe on the people's money, and they'd
probably be just as hard if the shirt only cost two dollars and a
quarter, excepting that the luxury tax of ten per cent. is only
collected from the purchasers of men's shirts of the value of three
dollars and upwards on amounts in excess of three dollars each. Also,
Mawruss, people which has just paid eight dollars for a bathrobe on
which the tax would be ten per cent. of fifty cents, or five cents cash,
y'understand, is going to say: 'Couldn't that feller travel to and from
Europe in one state-room the same like anybody else? Must he got to have
a whole steamboat?' and they will start right in to estimate that the
cost of keeping a steamboat the size of the _George Washington_ in
commission is forty-five thousand six hundred and twenty-two dollars and
thirty-eight cents per diem, and is it any wonder you've got to pay a
one-cent tax on every orange phosphate, understand me."

"Some people is willing to get in a knock at Mr. Wilson without even so
much as an orange-phosphate tax for an excuse, Abe," Morris said,
significantly.

"I know they are," Abe replied, innocently, "and as for
Postmaster-General Burleson, seemingly he couldn't suit nobody no matter
what he does. Take, for instance, them fourteen bombs which was mailed
in New York the other day, Mawruss, and if it wouldn't be that
Postmaster-General Burleson has probably given strict orders that no
mail should be forwarded which was short even a half-a-cent
postage-stamp even, the chances is that every one of them fourteen bombs
would have been delivered and exploded by now. But suppose that, instead
of Postmaster-General Burleson, we would have had as Postmaster-General
some good-natured feller which when his New York representatives called
him up and told him they were holding fourteen packages there for
additional postage, would have said: 'Oh, let 'em go. We couldn't afford
to be small about a little thing like additional postage.' And what
would have happened? Why, the fourteen judges, mayors, and assorted
Senators and district attorneys to which them packages was addressed
would have been lucky if they escaped with nothing worse than singed
eyebrows, Mawruss. And to-day yet, Mawruss, them fellers which has got
only Postmaster-General Burleson to thank that they can still riffle a
deck of cards, understand me, is probably go