What war done ain't a marker on what peace is going to do to a great
many of these here front-page propositions which is nowadays
accustomed to being continued on page two, column five, y'understand.
"Yes, Mawruss," Abe said, as he thrust aside the sporting section one
Sunday in October, "a people at war is like a man with a sick wife.
Nothing else interests him, which here it stands an account from how
them loafers out in Chicago plays baseball for the world's record yet,
and for all the effect it has on me, Mawruss, it might just so well be
something which catches my eye for the first time in the old newspaper
padding which my wife pulls out from under the carpet when she is
house-cleaning in the spring of nineteen twenty."
"Well," Morris said, "I must got to confess that when I seen it
yesterday how this here Fleisch shoots a home run there in the fifth
innings, I--"
"What are you talking nonsense--a home run in the fifth innings!" Abe
exclaimed. "The home run was made in the fourth innings. The White Sox
didn't make no score in the fifth innings. It was the Giants which made
their only run in the fifth. McCarty knocked a three-bagger and Sallee
singled and brought him home. _You_ tell _me_ what innings Fleisch shot
a home run in!"
"All right, Abe," Morris said, "I wouldn't argue with you, but all I got
to say is you're lucky that on account of the war you ain't interested
in auction pinochle the way you ain't interested in baseball, otherwise
you might get quite a reputation as a gambler."
"I am just so much worried about this war as you are, Mawruss," Abe
protested, "but if I couldn't take my mind off of it long enough to find
out which ball team is winning the world series I would be a whole lot
more worried about myself as I would be about the war, which it don't
make no difference how much a man loves his wife, y'understand, if she's
only sick on him long enough, Mawruss, he's going to get sufficiently
used to it to take in now and then a good show occasionally. In fact,
Mawruss, it's a relief to read once in a while in the newspapers
something which ain't about the war, like a murder, y'understand, the
only drawback being that along about the third day after the discovery
of the body, and just when you are getting interested in the thing,
General Haig advances another mile on a couple of thousand kilowatt
front, y'understand, and for all you can find anything in the newspaper
about your murder, y'understand me, the feller needn't have troubled
himself to commit it at all."
"Murderers ain't the only people which got swamped by the war," Morris
said. "Take William J. Bryan, for example, and up to within a year or
so, Abe, the newspaper publicity which William J. Bryan got free,
y'understand, William J. Douglas would of paid a quarter of a million
dollars for. Take also this here Hobson which sunk the _Merrimac_ and
Lindsey M. Garrison, who by resigning from the War Department come
within an ace and a couple of pinochle decks thrown in of ruining Mr.
Wilson's future prospects, Abe, and there was two fellers which used to
get into the newspapers as regularly as Harry K. Thaw and Peruna, and
yet, Abe, if any time during the past six months William J. Bryan,
Lindsey M. Garrison, and this here Hobson would of been out riding
together, and the automobile was to run over a cliff a hundred feet high
onto a railroad track and be struck by the cannon-ball express,
understand me, the most they could expect to see about it in the papers
would be: