"It gives them, for one thing, the privilege of wearing a red necktie," Morris suggested.
"And that don't make them a first-class risk for accident insurance," Abe concluded, "around the first of May, anyhow."
XV
THE PEACE TREATY AS GOOD READING
"At last the wind-up of this here Peace Conference seems to be in sight, Mawruss," Abe Potash said to his partner, Morris Perlmutter, the day after the Treaty of Peace was handed to the German plenipotentiaries. "As short a time ago since as last week it begun to look like our American delegates was going to stay in Paris for the rest of their lives, which, according to the tables of mortality prepared by some of our leading life-insurance companies, based on the average ages of all five of them delegates, would be anyhow until August 1, 1919."
"Well, they seem to have done a pretty good job, Abe," Morris observed. "I read over the accounts of the Treaty of Peace, Abe, and what them Germans has got to do outside of restoring the skull of the Sultan Okwawa under Section Eight of the treaty would keep her busy for fifty years yet."
"And who is this here Sultan Okwawa?" Abe inquired.
"I don't know," Morris replied, "but, considering the number of skulls which needs restoring on account of what the Germans done during the past five years, Abe, and also considering the fact that this is the only skull mentioned by name in the Peace Treaty, he must of had some pretty influential friends at the Peace Conference. Also, I see that the Germans is also to give back the papers belonging to M. Reuher which they took in 1871, and, although Section Eight don't say nothing about it, I presume that if the papers are returned the finder can keep the money which was in the wallet at the time it was lost."