"Plenty of fellers I know goes to these here near-doctors," Morris declared, "and nobody has got any sympathy for them, neither. Also, Abe, I 'ain't got no sympathy for anybody who goes to these here restaurants where they run off a cabarattel review, Abe, and yet it's a terrible punishment at that, so there's another tip for you if you want any more ideas for making the Kaiser suffer."
"Say, when it comes right down to it, Mawruss, and if you don't want to show the feller no mercy at all, y'understand," Abe said, "what's the matter with making him see some of them war plays they was putting on in New York last winter?"
"Why only war plays?" Morris asked. "I sat through a couple musical shows last winter without the option of a fine, y'understand, and it would be a good thing if the Kaiser could see performances like that—just to make him realize that in losing his throne, y'understand, he has no longer got the power to order the actors shot, together with the composer and the man that wrote the jokes."
"But the biggest punishment of all you 'ain't even hinted at yet," Abe said, "and it's a punishment which thousands of Americans is getting right now without no sympathy from nobody, which its name is:
"'Form 1040. United States Internal Revenue Service
Individual Income Tax Return
For Net Incomes of More than $5,000
For Calendar Year, 1918.'
Also, Mawruss, when you consider what the Kaiser done, Mawruss, I ask you is it too much that the Committee on Fixing Responsibility should order him starved to death or talked to death or any other slow and painful death, because such a fate is going to be a happy one compared with the thousands of decent, respectable American business men which is headed straight for an insane-asylum, trying to fill out
| "'(a) | Totals taxable at 1918 rates (see instructions page 2 under C). |
| (b) | Totals taxable at 1917 rates (see instructions, included in K (a) page 2). |
| (c) | Amount of stock dividends (column 4) taxable at 1916 rates (enter as 20).'" |
"Well, after all, Abe," Morris said, "there's one worser punishment you could hand out the Kaiser than filling out this here income tax."
"What's that?" Abe inquired.
"Paying it," Morris said.