"Who is Sophia?" Abe asked. "Also a relative of the Kaiser?"
"Sophia is the name of one big town in Bulgaria," Morris replied.
"That's a name for a big town—Sophia," Abe remarked. "Why don't they call it Lillian Russell and be done with it?"
"They could call it Williamsburg for all the business the Czar done there after the Kaiser got in his fine work," Morris said.
"And after all, what good did it done him?" Abe added. "Because you know as well as I do, Mawruss, the Kaiser ain't two jumps ahead of the sheriff himself. In fact, Mawruss, the king business is to-day like the human-hair business and the green-goods business. It's practically a thing of the past."
"Did I say it wasn't?" Morris asked.
"Being a king ain't a business no more, Mawruss. It's just a job," Abe continued, "and it's a metter of a few months now when the only kings left will be, so to speak, journeymen kings like the King of England and the King of Belgium and not boss kings like the King of Austria and the Kaiser. Why, right now, that Germany is his store, and that the poor Germans nebich is just salespeople; and he figures that if he wants to close out his stock and fixtures at a sacrifice and at the same time work his salespeople to death, what is that their business, y'understand."
"Well, that's the way the Czar figured," Morris commented. "For, Abe, the Kaiser has got an idee years already he was running Russland on the open-shop principle, and before he woke up to the fact that the people he had been treating right straight along as non-union labor was really the majority stockholders, y'understand, they had changed the combination of the safe on him and notified the bank that on and after said date all checks would be signed by Jacob M. Kerensky as receiver."
"You would think a feller like the Czar would learn something by what happened to this here Mellen of the New Haven Railroad," Abe said.
"Yow learn!" Morris replied. "Is the Kaiser learning something from what they done to the Czar?"