"You may be right, Abe," Morris said, "but when it comes right down to Bright's disease and charoses of the liver, y'understand, politics 'ain't got nothing to do with it, because it doesn't make no difference to whisky whether a feller voted for Wilson _oder_ Hughes. It would just as lieve ruin the health and prospects of a Republican as a Democrat."
"Whisky might," Abe admitted, "but how about beer and light wines, Mawruss, which you know as well as I do, Mawruss, a loafer must got to drink an awful lot of beer before he gets drunk."
"Well, that's what makes the brewery business good, Abe," Morris said.
"But don't you think in a great number of cases, Mawruss, beer is drunk to squench thirst?" Abe asked.
"That's the way it's drunk in a great number of cases--twenty-four bottles to the case," Morris said; "but if the same people was to drink water the way they drink beer, Abe, instead of thirst you would think it was goldfish that troubled them, which I can get as thirsty as the next one, Abe, but I can usually manage to squench it without making an aquarium out of myself exactly."
"_Aber_ what about light wines?" Abe inquired. "They don't harm an awful lot of people, Mawruss."
"They don't harm an awful lot of people for the same reason that there ain't much pneumonia caused by people getting damp from using finger-bowls, Abe," Morris said, "because so far as I could see the American people feels the same way about light wines as they do about finger-bowls. They could use 'em and they could let 'em alone, and they feel a whole lot more comfortable when they're letting 'em alone than when they're using 'em."
"Well, I'll tell you, Mawruss," Abe said, "I think a great many people which is prejudiced against light wines on account of heartburn is laying it to the wine instead of the seventy-five-cent Italian table-d'hôte dinner which goes with it."
"Yes, and it's just as likely to be the cocktail which went before it as the glass of brandy which came after it, and that's the trouble with beer and light wine, Abe," Morris declared. "They usually ain't the only numbers on the program, and the feller which starts in on beer and light wines, Abe, soon gets such a big repertoire of drinks that he's performing on the bottle day and night, y'understand, which saloon-keepers knows better than anybody else, Abe, because if you would ask a saloon-keeper _oder_ a bartender to have something, y'understand, it's a hundred-to-one proposition that he takes a cigar and not a glass beer."