"Well, for that matter, Abe," Morris said, "if you are up against it for space to fill in about the Bella Hirshkind Home, how many lines did Mr. McAdoo leave me to write in about you and Feigenbaum?"
"Me and Feigenbaum?" Abe repeated.
"Sure!" Morris said. "The time you and him had the argument should it be pronounced Bolsheviki or Bolsheveeki."
"Well, I was right, wasn't I?" Abe demanded.
"Certainly you were right," Morris replied. "But the question is, do I put in the fifteen-hundred-dollar order he canceled on us under 'Explanation of Losses of Business Property' or under 'J. General Deductions Not Reported on Page Three'?"
"Put it in the same place where I would put the money which I lost from having got it a partner which wastes dollars' and dollars' worth of time on me every day by arguing about things which arguing couldn't help," Abe advised. "Because with this here income-tax proposition, Mawruss, if you are going to waste so much time arguing about what you have lost that you couldn't be able to remember by April first what you made, y'understand, you would lose in addition a thousand dollars more and fifty per cent. of the amount of the tax due, and you couldn't have the consolation of blaming it on your partner, neither."
"It seems to me, Abe," Morris commented, "that the government makes a big mistake limiting you to April first, because I already figured my income tax out six times and it comes to a hundred dollars more every time, which if they would only give me till, say, the first of August, y'understand, I might be able to figure it out a couple dozen times more and pay the government some real big money."
"With me, Mawruss," Abe said with a sigh, "sometimes it's more and sometimes it's less, but it only goes to show how if a business man is going to have such a big difference of opinion with himself, Mawruss, what kind of a difference of opinion is he going to have with the collector of internal revenue? So I guess the only thing for me to do is to start all over again and this time I'll multiply the result by two, because if I've got to pay anything extra to the government, y'understand, I'd just as lieve do it without getting indicted first."
"Say!" Morris exclaimed. "If they started in to indict everybody which is going to figure up their income tax wrong this year, Abe, the government would got to draft a couple of million grand-jurymen, and then lay off the workers on cantonments and put them to building jails."
"And labor is scarce enough as it is, Mawruss, when you figure the hundreds of thousands of sitsons of this country which has been taken out of active business life during the past sixty days while they were engaged in making up their income-tax returns," Abe said.