Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things | Page 5

had taken the
stairs three at a jump and began to wring his hands effusively upon the
principle of any port in a storm.
"Well, well, well, if it ain't Leon Sammet!" Abe cried, and his manner
was as cordial as though, instead of their nearest competitor, Leon were
Potash & Perlmutter's best customer.
"The English language bounces off of that woman like water from a
duck's neck," Leon said, "which every five minutes she comes up here
and talks to me in French high speed with the throttle wide open like a
racing-car already."
"And the exhaust must be something terrible," Abe said.
"I am nearly frozen from opening the windows to let out her
conversation," Leon said, "and especially this morning, when I thought
I could get a lot of letter-writing done without being interrupted, on
account of the holiday."
"So that's the reason why everything is closed up!" Morris exclaimed.
"But Christmas ain't for pretty near two weeks yet," Abe said.
"What has Christmas got to do with it?" Leon retorted. "To-day is a
holiday because President Wilson arrives in Paris."
"And you are working here?" Abe cried.

"Why not?" Leon asked.
"You mean to say that President Wilson is arriving in Paris to-day and
you ain't going to see him come in?" Morris exclaimed. "What for an
American are you, anyway?"
"Say, for that matter, President Wilson has been arriving in New York
hundreds of times in the past four years," Leon said, "and I 'ain't heard
that you boys was on the reception committee exactly."
"That's something else again," Abe said. "In New York we've got
business enough to do without fooling away our time rubbering at
parades, but President Wilson only comes to Paris once in a lifetime."
"And some of the people back home is kicking because he comes to
Paris even that often," Leon commented.
"Let 'em kick," Morris declared, "which the way some Americans runs
down President Wilson only goes to show that it's an old saying and a
true one that there is no profit for a man in his own country, so go
ahead and write your letters if you want to, Leon, but Abe and me is
going down-town to the Champs Elizas and give the President a couple
of cheers like patriotic American sitsons should ought to do."
"In especially," Abe added, "as it is a legal holiday and we wouldn't
look at no model garments to-day."

II
SETTLING THE PRELIMINARIES
"After all, Mawruss," 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."

"What do you mean--give him a chance to wash up?" Morris asked.
"Don't you suppose he had a chance to wash up on the train, or do you
think him and Mrs. Wilson sat up all night in a day-coach?"
"I don't care if they had a whole section," Abe retorted; "it ain't the
easiest thing in the world to step off a train in a stovepipe hat, with a
clean shave, after a twenty-hour trip, even if it would of been one of
them eighteen-hour limiteds even, and begin right away to get off a lot
of schmooes about he don't know how to express the surprise and
gratification he feels at such an enthusiastic reception, in especially as
he probably lay awake half the night trying to memorize the bigger part
of the speech following the words, 'and now, gentlemen, I wouldn't
delay you no longer.' So that's why I say if they would have let him go
to his hotel first, y'understand, why, then he--"
"But Mr. and Mrs. Wilson ain't putting up at no hotel. They are staying
with a family by the name of Murat," Morris explained.
"Relations to the Wilsons maybe?" Abe inquired.
"Not that I heard tell of," Morris replied.
"Well, whoever they are they've got my sympathy," Abe said; "because
once, when the Independent Order Mattai Aaron held its annual Grand
Lodge meeting in New York, me and Rosie put up the Grand Master,
by the name Louis M. Koppelman, used to was Koppelman & Fine, the
Fashion Store, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and the way that feller turned
the house upside down, if he would have stayed another week with us,
understand me, I would have hired a first-class A number one criminal
lawyer to defend me and wired the relations for instructions as to how
to ship the body