"Not nearly so surprising as what they would drink in the same circumstances," Morris Perlmutter remarked.
"Well, I don't know," Abe continued. "Here it stands in the newspapers where a professor says that for the information of them men which would sooner eat grasshoppers as starve, Mawruss, they taste very much like shrimps if you know how shrimps taste, which I am thankful to say that I don't, Mawruss, because I never yet had the nerve to eat shrimps on account of them looking too much like grasshoppers."
"That's nothing," Morris declared. "In Porto Rico, where they have had prohibition now for some time already, the authorities has just found out that the people has been drinking so much hair tonic as ersat-schnapps, Abe, that the insides of the stomach of a Porto-Rican looks like the outside of the President of the new Polish Republic, if you know what I mean."
"Well, if the prohibition law is going to be enforced so as to confiscate the schnapps which is now being stored away by the people who have had an insurance actuary figure out their expectancy of life at ten drinks a day for 13.31416 years, Mawruss, or all the cellar will hold, y'understand," Abe said, "it won't be much later than July 2d before somebody discovers that there's quite a kick to furniture polish or 6-in-1, Mawruss, and in fact I expect to see after July 1st, 1919, that there would be what looks like stove polish, shoe polish, automobile-body polish, and silver polish retailing at from one dollar to a dollar and a half per hip-pocket-size bottle, which after being strained through blotting-paper, y'understand, would net the purchaser three drinks of the worst whisky that ever got sold on Chatham Square for five cents a glass."
"And I suppose that pretty soon they will be passing a law forbidding the manufacture of stove polish and directing that the labels on the bottles shall contain the statement:
"Stove Polish by Volume 2, Seventy-five per cent. And in a thimbleful of what ain't stove polish in that stove polish, Abe, there wouldn't be no more harm than two or three quarts of so much nitroglycerin, y'understand," Morris said. "Also on Saturday nights you will see the poor women nebich hanging around the swinging doors of paint and color stores right up to closing-time to see is their husbands inside, while the single men will stagger from house-furnishing store to house-furnishing store—or the Poor Men's Clubs, as they call them places where stove and silver polish is sold."
"But joking to one side, Mawruss, you don't suppose that the Polaks and the Huns and all them foreigners is going to leave off drinking schnapps just because of a little thing like a prohibition amendment to the Constitution of the United States, do you?" Abe said.
"Why do you limit yourself to Polaks and Huns, Abe?" Morris asked. "Believe me, there is fellers whose forefathers was old established American citizens before Henry Clay started his cigar business, y'understand, and when them boys gets a craving for schnapps after July 1st, they would oser go to the nearest Carnegie Library and read over the Prohibition Amendment to the Constitution till that gnawing feeling at the pit of the stomach had passed away, understand me. At least, Abe, that is what I think is going to happen, and from the number of people which is giving out prophecies to the newspapers about what is going to happen, and from the way they differ from each other as to what is going to happen—not only about prohibition, but about conditions in Europe, the Next War, the Kaiser's future, and the next presidential campaign, y'understand, it seems to me that anybody could prophesy anything about everything and get away with it."
"They could anyhow get away with it till it does happen," Abe commented.
"Sure I know, but generally it don't happen," Morris said. "Take for instance where Mr. Vanderlip is going round telling about the terrible things which is going to happen in Europe unless something which Mr. Vanderlip suggests is done, and take also for instance where Mr. Davison is going round telling about the terrible things which is going to happen in Europe unless something which Mr. Davison suggests is done, y'understand, and while I don't know nothing about Europe, understand me, I know something about Mr. Vanderlip, which is that he just lost his jobs as director of the War Savings Stamp Campaign and president of the National City Bank, and you know as well as I do, Abe, when a man has just lost his job things are apt to look pretty black to him, not only in Europe, understand me, but in Asia, Africa, and America, and sometimes Australia and New Zealand, also."