FRANK'S CAMPAIGN OR THE FARM AND THE CAMP

By HORATIO ALGER, JR.




FRANK'S CAMPAIGN


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.