文档介绍:FRANK'S CAMPAIGN OR THE FARM AND THE CAMP
FRANK'S CAMPAIGN
OR THE FARM AND
THE CAMP
By HORATIO ALGER, JR.
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FRANK'S CAMPAIGN OR THE FARM AND THE CAMP
CHAPTER I. THE WAR
MEETING
The Town Hall in Rossville stands on a moderate elevation
overlooking the principal street. It is generally open only when a meeting
has been called by the Selectmen to transact town business, or
occasionally in the evening when a lecture on temperance or a political
address is to be delivered. Rossville is not large enough to sustain a course
of lyceum lectures, and the townspeople are obliged to depend for
intellectual nutriment upon such chance occasions as these. The majority
of the inhabitants being engaged in agricultural pursuits, the population is
somewhat scattered, and the houses, with the exception of a few grouped
around the stores, stand at respectable distances, each encamped on a farm
of its own.
One Wednesday afternoon, toward the close of September, 1862, a
group of men and boys might have been seen standing on the steps and in
the entry of the Town House. Why they had met will best appear from a
large placard, which had been posted up on barns and fences and inside
the village store and postoffice.
It ran as follows:
WAR MEETING!
The citizens of Rossville are invited to meet at the Town Hall, on
Wednesday, September 24, at 3 P. M. to decide what measures shall be
taken toward raising the town's quota of twenty-five men, under the recent
call of the President of the United States. All patriotic citizens, who are in
favor of sustaining the free institutions transmitted to us by our fathers, are
urgently invited to be present.
The Hon. Solomon Stoddard is expected to address the meeting.
Come one, come all.
At the appointed hour one hundred and fifty men had assembled in
the hall. They stood in groups, discussing the recent call and the general
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FRANK'S CAMPAIGN OR THE FARM AND THE CAMP
management of the war with that spirit