XII
THIS HERE VICTORY LIBERTY LOAN
"The way some people is acting about this here Victory Loan, Mawruss," 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. "'We already give them Liberty Loan schnorrers two hundred dollars toward the expenses of their rotten war,' they probably say, 'and still they ain't satisfied.'"
"And at that they don't mean nothing by it," Abe said, "because there is a whole lot of business men in the United States which couldn't even give up the family housekeeping money every week without anyhow saying to their wives: 'Here, take my blood; take my life. What do you want from me, anyway?'"
"Maybe they do and maybe they don't mean nothing by it, Abe," Morris said, "but it would be a whole lot easier for this here Carter J. Glass if everybody would act as his own Victory Bond salesman and try to sell himself just one more bond than he has really got any business buying, y'understand."
"It would be a whole lot easier for this here Carter J. Glass, Mawruss, but it would be practically impossible for pretty nearly everybody else," Abe remarked, "which human nature is so constituted, Mawruss, that the only time a man really and truly uses some high-class, silver-tongued salesmanship on himself is when he is trying to persuade himself that it is all right for him to do something which he knows in his heart it is dead wrong for him to do."
"Well, at least, Abe, in this here Victory Loan Campaign, every man should ought to try to put himself in the place of the salesman which is trying to sell him some of these Victory Bonds," Morris continued, "so we would say, for example, that you would be a Victory Bond salesman, Abe, and you are calling on a feller which he is a pretty tough proposition in such matters by the name of, we would say, for instance, Abe Potash."
"Why don't you make the feller which the salesman is supposed to call on a really and truly hard-boiled egg, by the name, we would say, for instance, Mawruss Perlmutter?" Abe asked. "Which when you put up to me a hypocritical case, Mawruss, why is it you must always start in by getting insulted already?"