Worrying Won't Win

"And the only kick they've got, Mawruss," Abe said, "is that President Wilson won't expose his hand, which, if he did, he might just so well throw the game to Germany and be done with it." Frontispiece

"I bet yer over half a czar's morning mail already is circulars from casket concerns alone, Abe." Facing p. 2

"'So,' Mrs. Hoover says, 'you had one of them sixty-cent table-d'hote lunches to-day again, and now of course you 'ain't got no appetite. How many times did I tell you you shouldn't eat that poison?'" " 50

"Perhaps it's because this here Lord George and King George is related maybe," Morris suggested. "I don't think so," Abe replied. "The name is only a quincidence." " 60

"'Well, if we are such big experts on machine-guns, we should ought to know a whole lot more about machine-guns as Colonel Lewis, and what does that Schlemiel know about machine-guns, anyway?'" " 108

"And five minutes after the jury had returned a verdict would be on his way up to the Matteawan Asylum for the Criminal Insane." " 152

"Take, for instance, sopranos, and they come in two classes. There is the soprano which hollers murder police and they call her a dramatic soprano. And then again there is the soprano which gargles. That is a coloratura soprano." " 180

"For instance, who is it that says whole-wheat bread irritates the lining from the elementry canal? The ignorant man? Oser!" " 202

WORRYING WON'T WIN

WORRYING WON'T WIN

I

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE CZAR BUSINESS

Like the human-hair business and the green-goods business it is not what it used to be.

"Yes, Abe," Morris Perlmutter said to his partner, Abe Potash, as they sat in their office one morning in September, "the English language is practically a brand-new article since the time when I used to went to night school. In them days when a feller says he is feeling like a king, it meant that he was feeling like a king, aber to-day yet, if a feller says he feels like a king it means that he's got stomach and domestic trouble and that he don't know where the money is coming from to pay his next week's laundry bill. Czars is the same way, too. Former times when you called a feller a regular czar you meant he was a regular czar, aber nowadays if you say somebody is a regular czar it means that the poor feller couldn't call his soul his own and that he must got to do what everybody from the shipping-clerk up tells him to do with no back talk."

"Well, it only goes to show, Mawruss," Abe commented. "There was a czar, y'understand, which for years was not only making out pretty good as a czar, y'understand, but had really as you might say been doing something phenomenal yet. In fact, Mawruss, if three years ago R.G. Dun or Bradstreet would give it a rating to czars and people in similar lines, y'understand, compared with the czar already, an old-established house like Hapsburg's in Vienna would be rated N. to Q., Credit Four, see foot-note. And to-day, Mawruss, where is he?"

"Say," Morris protested, "any one could have reverses, Abe, because it don't make no difference if it would be a czar oder a pants manufacturer, and they both had ratings like John B. Rockafellar even, along comes two or three bad seasons like the czar had it, y'understand, and the most you could hope for would be thirty cents on the dollar--ten cents cash and the balance in notes at three, six, and nine months, indorsed by a grand duke who has got everything he owns in his wife's name and 'ain't spent an evening at home with her since way before the Crimean War already."