Talk by Smith D. Atkins. Opera House, Mendota, Illinois, February 22, 1907, at invitation of Woman's Relief Corps, G.A.R. When the Civil War came in this country forty-seven years ago, I was a young lawyer in Freeport, with not a particle of military schooling, and not the slightest inclination for military life. But when our good President, Abraham Lincoln, made his first call for three months' volunteers in April, 1861, I enlisted as a private soldier, and when mustered out at the end of three