"Put your _own_ self in the place of the Victory Bond salesman," Abe exclaimed, "which if you want to give me any hypocritical cases for the sake of argument, Mawruss, I have seen the way you practically snap the head off a collector for a charitable fund enough times to appreciate how you would behave towards a Victory Bond salesman, so go ahead on the basis that you are the tough proposition and not me."
"A charitable fund is one thing and this here Victory Loan another," Morris said.
"I know it is," Abe agreed, "but at the same time, Mawruss, a whole lot of people feels that if ever they give a couple dollars to an orphan-asylum, they practically got vaccinated against future attacks of the same complaint, and if three years later the collector for the orphan-asylum calls on them again they say: 'Why, I already gave you two dollars for that orphan-asylum! What did you done with it all?' And I bet yer that just as many people considered that the fifty-dollar bond which they bought during the First Liberty Loan Campaign should ought to have set up such a strong antiseptic in their system that they would be immune to all other Liberty Bond Campaigns, no matter if such campaigns would continue until there was, God forbid! a Fiftieth Liberty Loan already."
"Some people never even got, so to speak, jabbed the first time," Morris observed, "and the way they avoid Liberty Bond salesmen, Abe, you would think that such a salesman was a sort of Liberty Bond Typhoid Mary and would infect them tightwads with a disease where they were liable to break out all over with coupons or something."
"As a matter of fact, Mawruss, that's just the effect which a Liberty Bond salesman should ought to have on the right kind of sitson," Abe said, "which while I don't mean to say that making a good investment like buying of a Liberty Bond should ought to be considered as a disease, Mawruss, it should anyhow be infectious and should ought to spread so rapidly that everybody in the United States could say they had it to the extent of at least one fifty-dollar bond of the Victory Loan."
"But there is over a hundred million people in the United States, Abe," Morris said, "and if they all bought one fifty-dollar bond, y'understand, it would make the Victory Loan five billion dollars, whereas this here Carter J. Glass is only asking for four billion five hundred million."