Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things | Page 6

to work and figure where Mrs. Murat is kicking to Mr. Murat that she couldn't make out with the housekeeping money while the Wilsons is in Paris, on account of having to buy an extra bottle of Grade B milk every day, or something like that, which you talk like Mr. and Mrs. Wilson was in Paris on a couple of weeks' vacation, whereas the President has come here to settle the peace of the world."
"Did I say he didn't?" Abe protested.
"And while you are sitting here talking a lot of nonsense," Morris went on, "big things is happening, which with all the questions he has got to think about, I bet yer the President oser worries his head about a little affair like board and lodging. Also I read in one of them Paris editions of an American paper that there come over to France on the same steamer with him over three hundred experts--college professors and the like--and them fellers is now staying in Paris at various hotels, which, if that don't justify Mr. Wilson in putting up with a private family, y'understand, I don't know what does!"
"I thought at the time I read about them experts coming over to help the President in the Peace Conference that he was letting himself in for something," Abe observed.
"I bet yer!" Morris said. "And that's where Colonel House was wise when he comes over on a steamer ahead of them, because it is bad enough when you are crossing the ocean in winter-time to be President of the United States and to have to try not to act otherwise, without having three hundred experts dogging your footsteps and thinking up ways to start a conversation and swing it towards the subject they are experts in. Which I bet yer every time the President tried to get a little exercise by walking around the promenade deck after lunch there was an expert on Jugo-Slobs laying for him who was all worked up to tell everything he knew about Jugo-Slobs in a couple of laps, provided the President lasted that long."
"Well, I'll tell you," 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. He'll talk you deaf, dumb, and blind, anyhow. So you can imagine what it must be like when you are getting advice from an expert!"
"It seems to me that before the President gets through he will be looking around for an expert which is expert in choking off advice from experts, otherwise the first time the President consults one of them experts, if he's going to wait for the expert to get through, he will have to be elected to a third term and then maybe hold over, at that," Morris commented.
"I should think the President would be glad when this Peace Conference is over," Abe said.
"Say! For that matter he'll be glad when it's started," Morris said. "Which the way it looks now, Abe, the preliminaries of a peace conference is harder on a President in the way of speeches and parades than two Liberty Loan campaigns and an inauguration. Take, for instance, the matter of dinners, and I bet yer before he even goes to London next week he would have six meals with the President of France alone--I can't remember his name."
"Call him Lefkowitz," Abe said, "I'll know who you mean."
"Well, whatever it is, he looks like a hearty eater, Abe," Morris remarked.
"In fact, Mawruss, from what I seen of them French politicians in the parade this morning," Abe observed, "none of them looked like they went slow on starchy foods and red meats, whereas take the American Peace Commissioners, from the President down, and while they don't all of them give you the impression that they eat breakfast food for dinner exactly, still at the same time if these here peace preliminaries is going to include more dinners than parades, the French Commissioners has got them under a big handicap."
"Maybe you're right," Morris agreed. "But my idee is that with these here preliminary peace dinners it ain't such a bad thing for us if our Peace Commissioners wouldn't be such hearty eaters, y'understand, because you know how it is when we've got a hard-boiled egg come into the place to look over our line, it's a whole lot better to get an idee of about how much he expects to buy after lunch than before, in especially if we pay for the lunch. So if this here President Lefkowitz, or whatever the feller's name is, expects to fill up the President with a big meal of them French à la dishes