Among that party of first volunteers was a favorite cousin of the writer who was scarcely seventeen years old. The one thing above all others that I wished as I saw him ride away was that I was old enough to go, too. Patriotism ran high in Carthage, and the town sent more than its share of volunteers in the early days of the war before there were any big bounties and when the pay was $11 per month. One bright morning in the fall of 1861 a motherless lad of less than thirteen saw his father go away with a company of men that had been recruited for the Morgan Flying Artillery, then being organized at Staten Island, in New York harbor. He wanted to go with his father, but the suggestion was not listened to. After the regiment was sent to Virginia Capt. Smith of the Carthage company returned home after more men. He brought a letter to the little lad from his father and, patting the boy on his head, asked him in a joking way how he would like to be a soldier. This gave the boy an opportunity that he was wanting, and he pleaded with the officer to take him back with him. The mother was dead, the home was broken up; the little fellow argued that he would be better off with his father. The tender hearted captain sympathized with the boy, but said he did not know what he could do with such a little fellow. The boy would not be put off, however. He had inherited persistency from his Scottish ancestors, and after much importuning the captain said that he did not know how it could be managed, but he would try to take the boy back with him. In March, 1862, when two months past thirteen years old, the one of whom I write started for the war with a squad of recruits in charge of Sergt. Wesley Powell. Strange to relate, this same Powell, two years and a half later, had charge of a detachment of soldiers carrying rations to their comrades on the firing line in front of Petersburg, when a shell burst so close to them that several were stunned, although not seriously injured, and among them was the boy who went to the war with the sergeant so long before. A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD SOLDIER. Forty-two years and over have not dimmed the recollections of the day when the start was made for the war. The boy got up bright and early and went all around among his neighboring playmates and bade them good-bye. Didn’t he feel important, though? The party rode to Watertown in wagons, and after a supper at the old American hotel, boarded a train for New York. It was the first ride on the cars for our young volunteer. The boy might live to be one thousand years old, but he could scarcely forget Broadway as it appeared to him that spring day in 1862.