That ghastly vision of the mounted corpse can find no place in histories of this war. It has no historical significance even if it did receive a place in the cable dispatches from the front. Only from the lips of soldiers or from their pens when they snatch a few moments from the business of war to write to their people at home come such naively graphic accounts of trivial but illuminative incidents. In many an American family is treasured a packet of yellow papers, on which are written, in ink fast fading away, brief and intimate impressions of the civil war by men who waged it. Every war has thus its unknown, unhonored chroniclers, who send to their little home circles narratives that for startling realism no highly paid special correspondent could surpass. Trooper Cargill's letter is one of a number contained in an extraordinary volume just published by the George H. Doran Company of New York, with the title "In the Firing Line," (50 cents net.) Mr. A. St. John Adcock collected a large number of letters sent home during the last few weeks by English soldiers fighting in France and has arranged them to form what is perhaps the most essentially human account of the great war that has yet appeared. Consider, for instance, the narrative of Private Whitaker of the Coldstream Guards. He fought through the terrific four-day battle near Mons, and his account of it follows. It must be remembered that the British troops who took part in that battle had sailed from Southampton only four days before: You thought it was a big crowd that streamed out of the Crystal Palace when we went to see the Cup Final. Well, outside Compiegne it was just as if that crowd came at us. You couldn't miss them. Our bullets plowed into them, but still they came for us. I was well intrenched, and my rifle got so hot I could hardly hold it. I was wondering if I should have enough bullets when a pal shouted, "Up, Guards, and at 'em!" The next second he was rolled over with a nasty knock on the shoulder. He jumped up and hissed, "Let me get at them!" His language was a bit stronger than that. When we really did get the order to get at them we made no mistake, I can tell you. They cringed at the bayonet, but those on our left wing tried to get around us, and after racing as hard as we could for quite five hundred yards we cut up nearly every man who did not run away. You have read of the charge of the Light Brigade. It was new to our cavalry chaps. I saw two of our fellows who were unhorsed stand back to back and slash away with their swords, bringing down nine or ten of the panic-stricken devils. Then they got hold of the stirrup-straps of a horse without a rider and got out of the melee. This kind of thing was going on all day.