[Gutenberg 45071] • The Lost Army

Let's go and enlist!"

"Perhaps they won't take us," was the reply.

"Well, there 's nothing like trying," responded the first speaker. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

"That's so," said the other. "And if we can't go for soldiers, perhaps they 'll find us useful about the camp for something else."

This conversation took place between two boys of Dubuque, Iowa, one pleasant morning early in the year 1861. They were Jack Wilson and Harry Fulton, neither of whom had yet seen his sixteenth birthday. They were the sons of industrious and respectable parents, whose houses stood not far apart on one of the humbler streets of that ambitious city; they had known each other for ten years or more, had gone to school together, played together, and at the time of which we are writing they were working side by side in the same shop.

The president issued a call for seventy-five thousand men to serve for three months, and the call was responded to with alacrity. And it was in the recruiting that formed a part of this response that our story opens.

Jack and Harry went to the recruiting office, which was on one of the principal streets of Dubuque and easy to find. Over the doorway an immense flag—the flag of the nation—was waving in the morning breeze, and in front of the door was an excited group of men discussing the prospects for the future, and particularly the chances of war.