dilemma of all. Olympus
will not disgorge your washers until it has your receipt. On the other
hand, if you send the receipt, Olympus can always win the game by
losing the washers, and saying that _you_ have got them. In the face
of your own receipt you cannot very well deny this. So you lose
your washers, and the game, and are also made liable for the
misappropriation of two washers, for which Olympus holds your receipt.

Truly, the gods play with loaded dice.

On the whole, the simplest (and almost universal) plan is to convey a
couple of washers from some one else's gun.

The game just described is played chiefly by officers; but this is a
democratic age, and the rank and file are now occasionally permitted
to take part.

For example, boots. Private M'Splae is the possessor, we will say,
of a pair of flat feet, or arched insteps, or other military
incommodities, and his regulation boots do not fit him. More than
that, they hurt him exceedingly, and as he is compelled to wear them
through daily marches of several miles, they gradually wear a hole in
his heel, or a groove in his instep, or a gathering on his great toe.
So he makes the first move in the game, and reports sick--"sair feet."

The Medical Officer, a terribly efficient individual,
keenly--sometimes too keenly--alert for signs of malingering, takes a
cursory glance at M'Splae's feet, and directs the patient's attention
to the healing properties of soap and water. M'Splae departs,
grumbling, and reappears on sick parade a few days later, palpably
worse. This time, the M.O. being a little less pressed with
work, M'Splae is given a dressing for his feet, coupled with a
recommendation to procure a new pair of boots without delay. If
M'Splae is a novice in regimental diplomacy, he will thereupon address
himself to his platoon sergeant, who will consign him, eloquently, to
a destination where only boots with asbestos soles will be of any use.
If he is an old hand, he will simply cut his next parade, and will
thus, rather ingeniously, obtain access to his company commander,
being brought up before him at orderly-room next morning as a
defaulter. To his captain he explains, with simple dignity, that he
absented himself from parade because he found himself unable to "rise
up" from his bed. He then endeavours, by hurriedly unlacing his boots,
to produce his feet as evidence; but is frustrated, and awarded three
extra fatigues for not formally reporting himself s