| To coal | $7.00 |
| To loading coal | 1.00 |
| To unloading coal | 1.00 |
| To weighing coal | 1.00 |
| To delivering coal | 1.00 |
| To dusting off coal | 1.00 |
and you would be playing in luck if you didn't get charged a dollar each for tasting coal, smelling coal, feeling coal, and doing anything else to coal that a coal-dealer would have the nerve to charge one dollar for."
"Well, if I would be the United States government," Abe commented, "and had got a practical coal-man like this here Garfield to set a limit of seven dollars I wouldn't let them robbers pull no last rounds of rang-doodles on me, Mawruss. I'd take away their chips from 'em and put 'em right out of the game."
"Sure I know, Abe," Morris said, "aber this here Garfield ain't a practical coal-man, Abe, and maybe that's the trouble. Mr. Garfield is president of Williams College, so you couldn't blame these here coal-dealers, because you know as well as I do, Abe, the garment trade will certainly put up an awful holler if when it comes to appoint a cloak-and-suit administrator Mr. Wilson is going to wish on us some such expert as Nicholas Murray Butler oder the president of the Union Theological Cemetery."
"At that," Abe said, "I think they'd know more about the price of garments than Bernstorff did about the price of Congressmen. I always give that feller credit for more sense than that he should try to explain an item in his expense account by claiming that
April 3, 1917, To sundries $50,000
was what he paid for bribing the United States Congress."
"Well, say!" Morris exclaimed. "The poor feller had to tell 'em something, didn't he? Here he is coming back from his trip after losing his whole territory to his firm's competitors, and naturally he tries to make a good showing with his expense account, which, believe me, Abe, if I was a rotten salesman like that, before I would face my employer—and such an employer, because that Rosher 'ain't got them spike-end mustaches for nothing, Abe—I would first jump in the river, even if my expense account showed that I had been staying in a-dollar-and-a-half-a-day American-plan hotels and had sat up nights in the smoker for big jumps like from Terre Haute to Paducah."
"Can you imagine the way the Kaiser feels?" Abe said. "I suppose at the start he was keeping so calm that he bit the end off his fountain pen and started to light the cap, and probably took one or two puffs before he noticed anything strange about the flavor, because you could easy make a mistake like that with a German cigar.
"'Nu, Bernstorff,' he says, at last, as he looks at the expense account, 'before we take up the matter of this here eight-foot shelf of the world's greatest fiction I would like to hear what you got to say for yourself, so go ahead mit your lies and make it short.'