"And how could you expect to get from people like that an opinion which ain't on the bias?" Morris concluded.
XIII
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON BEING AN OPTICIAN AND LOOKING ON THE BRIGHT SIDE
"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said as he laid down the morning paper after glancing over the alarming head-lines, "a feller which has got stomach trouble or the toothache nowadays is playing in luck, because when you've got stomach trouble you couldn't think about nothing else, and what is a little thing like stomach trouble to worry over with all the tzuris which is happening in the world nowadays?"
"Well, then have stomach trouble," Morris Perlmutter advised.
"What do you mean—have stomach trouble?" Abe said. "A man couldn't get stomach trouble the same way he could get drunk, Mawruss. It is something which is just so much beyond your control as red hair or a good tenor voice."
"Sure, I know," Morris agreed. "But what is happening in Russia and Italy is also beyond your control, Abe, so if them Bolsheviki is getting on your nerves, and you hate to pick up the paper for fear of finding that the Germans would have captured Venice, understand me, console yourself with the idee that there's a lot of brainy fellers in this country which is doing all they know how to handle the situation over in the old country, and then if you want something near at home to worry about like stomach trouble, y'understand, there's plenty of misfortunate people in orphan asylums and hospitals right here in New York City which will be very glad to have you worry over them in a practical way out of what you've got left when you're through paying income and excise profit taxes, Abe."
"Maybe there is some people which would get so upset over having to give twenty dollars or so to an orphan asylum or a hospital, Mawruss, that for the time being they could forget how General Crozier 'ain't ordered the machine-guns yet," Abe said, "but me I ain't built that way. When it says in the papers where the Germans is sending all their soldiers away from the Russian front to the Italian front, y'understand, it may be that some people could read it and try not to worry by sending five dollars to them Highwaymen for Improving the Condition of the Poor, Mawruss, but when I read it, Mawruss, I think how it's all up to them Bolsheviki in Russia, and I get awful sore at the poor—in especially the Russian poor."
"What are you worrying your head about what they put in the papers?" Morris asked. "Seventy-five per cent. of the bridge-heads which the Germans capture in the New York morning papers might just so well be French villages, except that the reporters would have to look up the names of the villages on the map, because some editors are very particular that way; they insist that the reporter should use the name of a real village, whereas if he puts down that the Germans has captured a bridge-head on the Piave River he could go right out to lunch, and he never even stops to think that if somebody would check up the number of bridge-heads which the Germans has captured that way in the New York morning papers, Abe, the Piave River would got to be covered solid with bridges from end to end."