"It's too bad them fellers couldn't act the way Mr. Taft is behaving," Abe said. "There is an ex-President which is really and truly ex, y'understand, and seemingly don't want to be nothing else, neither."
"Well, Mr. Taft has got a whole lot of sympathy for Mr. Wilson, Abe," Morris said. "He knows how it is himself, because when he was President, y'understand, he also had experience with Mr. Roosevelt trying to police his administration."
"There's only one remedy, so far as I could see, Morris," Abe said, "if we're ever going to have Mr. Wilson make any progress with the war."
"You don't mean we should put through that law for the three brightest men in the country to run it?" Morris inquired.
"No, sir," Abe replied. "Put through a law that after anybody has held the office of ex-President for two administrations, Mawruss, he should become a private sitson—and mind his own business."
XX
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE GRAND-OPERA BUSINESS
"Where grand opera gets its big boost, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, the morning after Madame Galli-Curci made her sensational first appearance in New York, "is that practically everybody with a rating higher than J to L, credit fair, hates to admit that it don't interest them at all."
"And even if it did interest them, Abe," Morris Perlmutter said, "they would got to have at least that rating before they could afford it to buy a decent seat."