of colonel 157]

"Uncle Ike," said the red-headed boy, stepping one pace to the front,
and saluting with a piece of lath, "we came to offer you the position of
colonel of our regiment. We have thought over all the men who have been
suggested as leaders, and have concluded that you are the jim dandy, and
we want you to accept."

"Well, this takes me entirely by surprise;" said Uncle Ike, as he laid
the shotgun on the table; "I certainly have not sought this office.
But I cannot accept the trust until I know what is the object of the
organization. Who do you propose to fight?"

"We are organized to fight the French, both with weapons and by the
boycott," said the leader, swelling out his chest, and each red hair
sticking up straight. "We have watched the trial of Dreyfus, and the
outrage of his conviction without a particle of testimony against him,
has just made us sick, and we are forming a regiment to fight Frenchmen
wherever we find them. We had the first battle at daylight this morning,
when a French milkman drove along, and we threw eggs at him, and his
horse run away and spilled four cans of milk. We are for blood, or milk,
or any old thing that Frenchmen deal in. We will not drink any French
champagne, and have decided not to visit the Paris Exposition."

"Well, I swow! you have got it up your noses pretty bad, haven't you?"
said the old man as he ordered the platoon to sit down on the floor and
go into camp. "It is pretty tough, the way the French treated Dreyfus,
but how are you going to make your boycott work?"

"We are going to petition the President to cut off supplies for the
Paris Exposition, withdraw from participation in it, and we are going to
ask all the people that were intending to go to Paris to stay away."

"I see, I see," said Uncle Ike, feeling in the pocket of his old
sweater, and finding a handful of leaves, twigs and plug tobacco
that had accumulated there for years. "How many Jew boys have you got
enlisted in your army? You know this Dreyfus trouble is a fight on the
Jews, not only in France, but of the whole world. You ought to have a
whole regiment of Jew boys. How many have you got?"

"Well, we haven't got any yet, but a whole lot of them are going to
think about it, and ask their parents if they can join," said the
captain.

"Yes, they will think about it, but they won't join," said the old man,
reaching for his pipe, and lighting up for a talk. "The Jews are the
most patient, pe