Montague Glass

“ What we really itch to do, Abe, is to act the way a man would act if he gives somebody food and shelter in his home, and, as soon as such a schnorrer feels refreshed by what he has eaten and the good bed he has slept in, he turns on his host and, after insulting the members of the household, tries to wreck the furniture and set the house on fire. Such a feller you would first kick as many times as you had the strength ”

“ Yes, Abe, the effect of five-reel films on a moving-picture fan's heart is like the effect of five-star Scotch whisky on a typical club-man's life. It hardens it to such an extent that it practically ceases to do the work for which it was originally put into a human body, Abe."
"To tell you the truth, Mawruss, I 'ain't got no use for any kind of a fan, and that goes for moving-picture fans, fight fans, baseball fans, and pinochle fans, not to mention grand-opera fans, first-night theayter fans, and every other fan from golluf downwards. ”

“ Abe said, "because, after all, Mawruss, it can't be that only respectable people violate all them prohibition, anti-cigarette, and anti-speeding laws, and that, outside of dropping bombs, anarchists is otherwise law-abiding."
"At the same time, Abe, I couldn't help feeling sorry for a policeman who would arrest an anarchist by accident, especially if he didn't carry any accident insurance, because the only way to avoid accidents in arresting anarchists is to take a good aim at a safe distance, and let somebody else search the body for packages," Morris declared. ”

“ Morris declared, "I said it was a question of what the majority thinks, and the majority of people thinks that while they can drink schnapps and they can let it alone, Abe, the majority of people also think that the majority of the people who drink schnapps would be a whole lot better off without it. So that's the way it stands, Abe. Nobody wants to leave off buying liquor, but nobody wants to take the responsibility of letting the sale of liquor continue." ”

“ Abe exclaimed. "Why, I've got the greatest respect for Mr. Wilson, and always did, Mawruss, but it would be foolish not to admit that the practice which a President of the United States gets in being a college professor is more useful to him in framing up a first-class, A-number-one League of Nations than it is in getting his political enemies to accept it. Am I wright or wrong?"
"Maybe he would have got them to accept it if he had stayed in touch with them personally and managed the Peace Conference by wireless and cable," Morris suggested. ”

“ People which thought you was a tightwad if you happened to mention that six hundred million dollars of the country's money was used up in experimenting with aeroplanes, is now going to shriek in agony every time they buy a three-dollar-and-a-quarter shirt that it's a shame and 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. ”

“ Morris agreed; "but when a king is sleeping on a royal train in Europe, Abe, he can be pretty near as comfortable as a traveling-salesman sitting up all night on a day-coach in America, and if he spends two nights on such a royal train, the way President Wilson did in going from Paris to Rome, which is about as far as from New York to Chicago, y'understand, it wouldn't make no difference how many people is waiting at the station to holler 'Long live the King!' understand me, he is going to feel half dead, anyway." ”

“ Abe raised his right hand like a traffic policeman.
"Stop right there, Mawruss," he said, "because if the Freedom of the Seas is anything like Binder & Baum doing a business of two million dollars last year, I don't believe a word of it, which it wouldn't make no difference if Henry Binder was talking about the Freedom of the Seas or astronomy, sooner or later he is bound to ring in the large amount of goods he is selling, and, anyway, no matter what Henry Binder tells you, you must got to reckon ninety-eight per cent. discount before you could believe a word he says." ”

“ Morris said, "Mr. Wilson couldn't consider prejudice."
"No?" Abe retorted. "Well, could he consider who discovered America? A Jugo-Slob, I suppose, what? But never mind going so far back as [Pg 84] Christopher Columbus, Mawruss. Take our best workmen right in our own shop, Mawruss—them Tonies and them Roccos with all the time a pleasant smile no matter how hard we work them, and what are they? Jugo-Slobs or Italians? Take it in the city of New York alone, and do we get there half a million Jugo-Slobs or half a million Italians? I am asking you? ”

“ Morris declared.
"Put your own self in the place of the Victory Bond salesman," Abe exclaimed, "which if you want to give me any hypocritical cases for the sake of argument, Mawruss, I have seen the way you practically snap the head off a collector for a charitable fund enough times to appreciate how you would behave towards a Victory Bond salesman, so go ahead on the basis that you are the tough proposition and not me."
"A charitable fund is one thing and this here Victory Loan another," Morris said. ”

“ Morris asked.
"A reputation for having paid the United States Railroad Administration twice the regular fare to Toledo for a railroad journey, and also the reputation for having paid the manager of this here prize-fight fifty times the regular price of a ticket for a legitimate entertainment," Morris replied.
"But what for a reputation is that for a sane man to get?" Abe asked.
"Well," Morris commented, "for that matter, what kind of a reputation does the same man get when he pays fifty dollars to reserve a table at a Broadway restaurant on New-Year's Eve? ”

“ Abe declared. "Here is four American ladies which is lived in the country for some years—in fact, ever since they was born, and that ain't such a short time neither, when you see their pictures, Mawruss, and yet them ladies talks like they never heard tell of the Star-spangled Banner. Seemingly the fact that we licked Germany don't appeal to them at all, and so far as these resolutions which they passed between sobs, Mawruss, gives any indications, Mawruss, they would like to have seen this here European War end in a draw, with perhaps Germany getting just a shade the better of it." ”

“ Abe said, "which while I don't mean to say that making a good investment like buying of a Liberty Bond should ought to be considered as a disease, Mawruss, it should anyhow be infectious and should ought to spread so rapidly that everybody in the United States could say they had it to the extent of at least one fifty-dollar bond of the Victory Loan." ”

“ Abe Potash remarked one morning in April, "you would think that they was all presidents of a first national bank and that this here Carter J. Glass has already made a big overdraft and if he don't like the line of credit they are giving him, he should be so good as to take his account somewheres else, y'understand."
"Them same people probably think that investing their money in any securities bearing interest at less than fifteen per cent. per annum is, so to speak, the equivalence from giving money to orphan-asylums and hospitals, understand me," Morris Perlmutter said. ”

“ Morris said; "it is always the case, Abe, that when somebody does something which could only be explained on the grounds that he would sooner be in jail than out, he goes to work and claims that nobody understands him."
"But Rubin claims that the reason Bolshevism sprung in the first place was that the Bolsheviki was tired of the war," Abe continued, "whereas the Allies thought they were quitters." ”

“ Abe said, "a man which employs experts to ask advice from deserves all he gets, Mawruss, because you know how it is when you ask an advice from somebody which don't know a thing in the world about what he is advising you. ”

“ Abe said, "it is the people which holds such ideas that says you can't kill ideas by putting the people what holds them into jail, but just so soon as them people gets arrested, not only do they claim that they never held such ideas, but they deny that there even existed such ideas, and then the noise of the denials they are making is drowned out by the noise of the bombs which is being exploded according to the ideas they claim they don't hold, and that's the way it goes, Mawruss. ”

“ Their idea is to punish him by letting him live on to be an outcast among all the people of the earth, except the proprietors of first-class European hotels, dealers in high-grade automobiles, expensive jewelry storekeepers, fashionable tailors, and a couple of million other people who don't attach an awful lot of importance to the moral character of anybody which wants to enjoy life and has got the money to do it with. In other words, Abe, they claim that, in leaving the Kaiser to his conscience and his bank-account they are punishing him a whole lot worse as hanging him or shooting him. ”

“ Abe Potash said, as he sat with his partner, Morris Perlmutter, in their hotel room on the night after the President's arrival in Paris, "a President is only human, and it seems to me that if they would of given him a chance to go quietly to a hotel and wash up after the trip, y'understand, it would be a whole lot better as meeting him at the railroad depot and starting right in with the speeches." ”

“ Morris said, "it don't even pay to encourage them speech-making Reds by thinking they are important enough to be ducked in muddy water. After all, most of them are still young and sooner or later they would got to go to work, and once a man goes to work in this country it is only a matter of time when he gets up into the capitalistic class."
"There is also another thing to be considered about these here Reds, Mawruss," Abe said. "As Reds, they couldn't be taken altogether seriously, because Reds would be Reds only up to a certain point. ”

“ Abe said, "people which reads the newspapers don't take the same amount of interests in strikes like they once used to did before the United States government organized them Conciliation and Arbitration Boards, which [Pg 87] nowadays strikes is long, dull affairs consisting of the first strike, the arbitration, the decision, the second strike, the arbitration, the decision, the third strike, and so on for several months, because that's the trouble with arbitration, Mawruss: everybody is willing to arbitrate and nobody is willing to be decided against." ”

“ Morris commented, "and even then, Abe, where is the advantage?"
"It ain't the advantage, it's the novelty of the thing," Abe said, "and I'll bet yer, Mawruss, that if an Airyoplane Company was to open a ticket-office in New York to-morrow, Mawruss, men would be standing in line to buy accommodations on the first available airyoplane—men with wives and families and no life insurance at that." ”

“ Morris said. "They've been so busy arresting people for violations of the automobile and traffic laws that they 'ain't hardly got time for nothing else, so you see what a pipe it is for criminals, Abe. All they have got to do is to keep out of automobiles and stick to street cars, and they can rob, murder, and explode bombs, and the police would never trouble them at all." ”

“ Morris admitted, "but when you start in to tell about how smart one of your nephews by marriage is, Abe, it generally ends up by our paying a few weeks' salary to a young feller which all he learned about double entry is making birds with a pen, so I just want to warn you before you go any further, Abe, that in the future with me, Abe, if any of your nephews is an expert bird-maker with a pen, y'understand, you should please find him a job in a millinery concern and let me out." ”

“ When he argues that Cuba is a colored nation, he believes it, so, therefore, when he argues himself into being a colored man, he probably believes that he ain't quite so dark a colored man as Senator Vardaman, who comes from Mississippi, Abe, but only a light colored man, which is of course all nonsense, like Senator Reed's arguments. Senator Vardaman is a white man and Senator Reed is a white man and they are both of them as white as, but no whiter than, the President of Cuba and several million Brazilian gentlemen. ”

“ In fact, Abe, if I would be a German Bolshevik with instructions to shoot the Kaiser on sight, I should go gunning for a short, stout man with a tooth-brush mustache and a holy horror of wearing uniforms, because it's my opinion that all them so-called portraits of the Kaiser was issued for the purpose of misleading anarchists to shoot at a thin man in a heavily embroidered uniform with spike-end mustaches. ”