“The cultivation of the potato has played an important part in the history of Europe. In certain parts of Germany it helped to check the famines caused by the Thirty Years’ War. By 1688 it had become the staple food of the Irish peasantry, and the failure of the potato crop in 1845 and the resulting famine started the first great wave of Irish immigration to the United States.”
“I was reading an old poem about that Irish famine the other day,” said the boy named Billy, “where a little boy was begging his mother for just one grain of corn—I felt so sorry for him, but I can see now that he suffered hunger so that all the other children in the world might have good food all their lives—I hope someone gave him a nice hot baked potato before he got too hungry. There’s the dinner gong—Hurrah for the Irish!”
“Hurrah for us, too!” said Somebody.
“Sure,” said the boy named Billy.
Wherever his Regiment ... went, there was Old Abe!
Old Abe, the Wisconsin War-Eagle
