could confiscate, to provision the troops. At the appointed time the big boys, with numerous friends, appeared at the school yard, provided with a large tent. Work was at once found for the privates. Some were detailed to pitch the big tent. Others were dispatched after fuel for a bonfire. Others were posted as guards over the yard and its approaches, while a few, for whom no other employment could be found, were formed in a squad and the officers took turns in putting them through all the evolutions which their ingenuity could invent.
Meanwhile the bonfire had been encouraged till hot ashes were abundant and potatoes could be roasted in approved fashion. Then there was more work for the privates. One squad was commissioned to fetch water and cups from neighboring houses; another to preside at the fire and serve potatoes on demand; the sentinels were exhorted to guard their posts with redoubled faithfulness, and the officers, with their guests, retired to the tent.
Presently one of them reappeared and with loud voice commanded: "Potatoes for the Captain's tent!" Forthwith the fire was opened, and a squad of privates ran with smoking tubers to the official mess. Then the cooks cooked and the carriers carried and the guards guarded—all with a solemnity that grew more serious as the good cheer at headquarters waxed audibly and confidently gay. Anon the commissary sergeant reappeared at the tent door with the ominous command: "More potatoes for the Captain's tent!" Again and again military discipline triumphed. The Captain and his suite consumed potatoes till the ashes no longer yielded more. At that point the purposes of the campaign would seem to have been accomplished. Word was given to break camp, and the privates, weary, hungry, thirsty and worldly-wiser sought their homes.
It will not be utterly irrelevant to add that thirty years later I was casually in court, and heard sentence to state's prison pronounced upon a felon whom I gratefully identified as the boy who had issued the orders: "More potatoes for the Captain's tent!"
Let the incident be an allegory. The unrest of our society
