Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things | Page 7

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 until Mr. Wilson gets so
good-natured that he is willing to tell not only his life history, but also
just exactly what he means by a League of Nations, y'understand, the
dinner might just as well start and end with two poached eggs on toast,
for all the good it will do."
"Still, it ain't a bad idee to have all these dinners over and done with
before the business of the Peace Conference begins, Mawruss," Abe
remarked, "because hafterwards, when Mr. Wilson's attitude on some
of them fourteen propositions for peace becomes known, y'understand,
it ain't going to be too pleasant for Mrs. Wilson to be sitting by the side
of her husband and watch the looks of some of the guests sitting
opposite during the fish course, for instance, not wishing him no harm,
but waiting for a good-sized bone to lodge sideways in his throat, or
something."
"She is used to that from home already, whenever she has a few
Republican Senators to dinner at the White House," Morris said. "But
that ain't here nor there, anyhow, because after the Peace Conference
begins the President will be so busy, y'understand, that sending out one
of the Assistant Secretaries of State to a Busy Bee lunch-room to bring
him a couple of sandwiches and some coffee will be the nearest to a

formal dinner that the President will come to for many a day. Take, for
instance, the proposition of the Freedom of the Seas, and there's a
whole lot to be said on both sides by people like yourself which don't
know one side from the other."
"And I don't want to know, neither," Abe said, "because it wouldn't
make no difference to me how free the seas was made, once I get back
on terra cotta, Mawruss; they could not only make the seas free,
y'understand, but they could also offer big bonuses in addition, and I
wouldn't leave America again not if they was to give me a life pass
good on the Olympic or Aquitania with meals included."
"So your idea is that the freedom of the seas means traveling for
nothing on ocean steamers?" Morris commented.
"Say!" Abe retorted, "why should I bother my head what such things
mean when I got for a partner a feller which really by rights belongs
down at the Peace headquarters, along with them other big experts?"
"I never claimed to be an expert, but at the same time, I ain't an
ignerammus, neither, which even before I left New York, I knew all
about this here Freedom of the Seas," Morris said, "which the day
before we sailed I was talking to Henry Binder, of Binder & Baum, and
he says to me--"
"Excuse me, but what does Binder & Baum know about the Freedom of
the Seas?" Abe demanded. "They are in the wholesale pants business,
ain't it?"
"Sure, I know," Morris continued, "and Paderewski is a piano-player,
and at the same time he went over to Poland to organize the new Polish
Republic."
"And the result will be that when the new Polish Republic gets started
under the direction of this here piano-player," Abe said, "and they get a
new Polish National Anthem, it will be an expert piano-player's idea of
something which is easy to play, and the consequence is that until the
next Polish revolution, every time a band plays the Polish National

Anthem, them poor Polacks would got to stand up for from forty-five
minutes to an hour while the band struggles to get through with what it
would have taken Paderewski three minutes at the outside."
"Henry Binder is a college graduate even if he would be in the pants
business," Morris said, "and he said to me: 'Perlmutter,' he said, 'the
Freedom of the Seas is like this,' he says. 'You take a country like