"All right, Abe," Morris said. "I'm converted. Rather as sit here and waste the whole morning I'm content that you should pass a law saving daylight if you want to."
[Illustration: "For instance, who is it that says whole-wheat bread irritates the lining from the elementry canal? The ignorant man? _Oser!_"]
"Don't do me no favors, Mawruss," Abe commented.
"And while you're about it, Abe," Morris concluded, "if you couldn't save it otherwise, have the legislature pass another law that people should save something else for the duration of the war which they ordinarily couldn't live without."
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS WHY IS A PLAY-GOER?
"Did you see on the front page of all the newspapers this morning where Klaw & Erlanger has had another split with the Shuberts, Mawruss?" Abe Potash asked, one morning in February.
"Say," Morris Perlmutter replied, "I didn't even know they had ever made up since the time they split before, and, furthermore, Abe, I think that even if the most important news a feller in the newspaper business could get ahold of to print on his front page was an I.O.M.A. convention, instead of the greatest war in history, y'understand, he would be giving his readers a great big jolt compared with the thrill they get when they read about the troubles people has got in the show business."
"Maybe _you_ think so, Mawruss," Abe said, "but Klaw & Erlanger and the Shuberts don't think so, and when you consider that them two concerns control all the theayters in the United States and spends millions of dollars for advertising, Mawruss, a feller in the newspaper business don't show such poor judgment to give them boys a little space on the front page whenever they have their semi-annual split."
"Probably you're right, Abe," Morris said; "but if it was you and me that had a big fight on with our nearest competitors, Abe, advertising it in the newspapers would be the last thing we would be looking for."
"The garment business ain't the theayter business, Mawruss," Abe said. "For instance, being a defendant in a divorce suit don't get any one nowheres in the garment trade, because if a garment-manufacturer would have such a person working for him practically the only effect it would have on his business would be that he would be obliged to neglect it two or three times a day answering telephone inquiries from his wife as to just how he was putting in his time, y'understand, and so far as bringing customers into your place who want to see the lady you got working for you which all the scandal was printed about in the papers, Mawruss, it wouldn't make any difference _what_ the evidence was, you couldn't get your trade interested to the extent even of their coming in to snoop with no intentions to buy, y'understand. But you take it in the theayter business and big fortunes has been made out of rotten plays simply because the theayter-going public wanted to see if the leading lady looked like the pictures which was printed of her in the papers at the time the court denied her the custody of the child, understand me."