108 MEN I HAVE FISHED WITH. 



directions, Ira shook the dust of the stage from his feet, 

 left Thespis, Melpomene and other more or less reputable 

 goddesses behind him and sought other fields. We did 

 not meet again for many years. Boys do not care for 

 each other as men do, if they take the trouble to care for 

 any one except their royal selves, and we went our ways, 

 but somehow we were thrown together again ; perhaps by 

 some occult fatalism of which we then, and I now, know 

 nothing, for on a review of life to-day no man is recalled 

 whose early ideas so fully accorded with my own. He 

 never thought of accumulating wealth. A powerful 

 physique enabled him to disregard all thoughts of health 

 and a romantic disposition led him to seek adventure. 

 Without consultation we both went away in the same 

 year, he to the army and I to try a different but equally 

 adventurous life. 



Ira Wood enlisted February 18, 1854, in the Engineer 

 Corps, U. S. A., at Boston, Mass., for five years. He was 

 under instruction at West Point for a while and was then 

 employed on Fort Sumter, at Charleston ; Fort Taylor, at 

 Key West, and was discharged Feb. 18, 1859, at Fort Cas- 

 cade, Washington Territory, by reason of expiration of 

 his term of service as an artificer of Company A, First 

 Lieutenant James C. Duane commanding. He had made 

 application for examination for promotion to a lieuten- 

 antcy, but no examination was held between the time of 

 application and his discharge. 



At the call for volunteers after Fort Sumter was fired 

 upon, and the regiments of State militia were found in- 

 sufficient, Ira Wood raised the first company for the first 

 regiment of volunteers that was organized in the State 

 of New York ; but by some delay at Albany other organi- 

 zations were numbered ahead of it, and the regiment left 

 the State as the Twelfth New York Volunteer Infantry, 



