"Then if that's the case, Mawruss, how does it come that one after another, Korniloff, Lenine, and Trotzky, practically puts this here Kerensky out of business as a revolutionist?" Abe asked.
"Well, I'll tell you," Morris said. "A feller which is running a revolution in Russland has not only got to got nerve, y'understand, but he's also got to be able to stand very long hours. Also it is necessary for him to do a whole lot of traveling, because no sooner does such a feller set up his government in Petersburg, y'understand, than the Petersburg Local Number One of the Amalgamated Workingmen's and Soldiers' Union is liable to chase him and his government all the way to Moscow, y'understand, and hardly does he get busy in Moscow, understand me, than he gets in bad with the Moscow Local Number One of the same union, and so on vice versa. In fact, in a couple of weeks he's liable to be vice-versad that way a half a dozen times, which if Kerensky would have had experience as a traveling salesman, Abe, it wouldn't hurt him to be practically spending his entire time commuting between Moscow and Petersburg, but before this here Kerensky became a revolutionist he used to was in the law business, and besides he enjoys very poor health and is liable to die any moment."
"What's the matter with him?" Abe asked.
"I understand he's got kidney trouble," Morris replied.
"Well, if that feller would get an opportunity to die of kidney trouble, Mawruss, he should ought to take advantage of it," Abe commented, "because if you was to look up in the files of the Petersburg Department of Health what is the figures on the cause of death in the case of revolutionists, Mawruss, you would probably find something like this:
| Explosions | 91.31416% |
| Gun-shot wounds, including revolvers, air-rifles, machine-guns, cannons, armored tanks, torpedoes, and unclassified | 8.99999 |
| Knife wounds, including razors, cold chisels, pickaxes, and cloth and grass cutting apparatus | 0.563 |
| Natural causes, including hardening of the arteries | a trace." |
"What do you mean—natural causes?" Morris said. "When a revolutionist dies a natural death, it's a pure accident."
"Did I say it wasn't?" Abe said. "But at the same time some Russian revolutionists lives longer than others, because being a Russian revolutionist is more or less a matter of training. Take this here feller which is now conducting the Russian revolution under the name of Trotzky, and used to was conducting a New York trolley-car under the name of Braunstein, y'understand, and when the time comes—which it will come—when his offices will be surrounded by a mob of a hundred thousand Russian working-men and soldiers, understand me, all that this here Trotzky alias Braunstein will do is to shout 'Fares, please,' and he'll go through that crowd of working-men like a—well, like a New York trolley-car conductor going through a crowd of working-men."
"From what is happening in Mexico and Russia," Morris observed, "it seems that when a country gets a revolution on its hands it's like a feller with a boil on his neck. He's going to keep on having them until he gets 'em entirely out of his system."
"Well, Russia has had such an awful siege of them," Abe said, "that you would think she was immune by this time."