Dear Mr. Moore: I send you the enclosed yarn of Fifer. If you think it worth publishing in Trotwood you can do so. I am, as you see, not much of a writer like Ben Hord. I get the facts all O. K., but, to tell it so somebody will be interested, that’s the rub. The trouble about writing a war yarn, no two soldiers see things alike, and some fellow is liable to make you out a liar before you know it. I once wrote an account of a drill we had against the 15th Mississippi for a flag offered by the ladies, of Canton, Miss. I gave, as I thought, and what some of my old regiment had written, the exact facts. The colonel of the 15th Mississippi is still living. He answered my article, and made me out seventeen kinds of liars. I felt left. Not long after that the last ex-Confederate Reunion was held at Nashville. One day I was standing in front of the Tulane Hotel watching the big crowd going by, and a man passed with a metal badge with “15th Miss.” on it. I stopped him, and asked him if he remembered that drill, and when he found out I was in the other regiment, he was delighted. He had a crowd of Mississippi boys with him, but none of them had been members of the 15th, so he stood there and gave them an account of the drill, and corroborated every word I had written, though he had never seen it. Well, I believe you literary fellows say it is misquoted, but we privates have another name for it. Respectfully yours, HENRY EWELL HORD. Hermitage, Tenn., Soldiers’ Home. It was at Gainsville, Ala., we parted with our old Fifer Casey. He had been with us ever since the regiment was organized at Camp Boone, Tenn. He had fifed all through the Mexican War and nearly three years of the Civil War. At first he had lots to tell us about Cerro Gordo, Palo Alto and Chepultepec, but after we got down to business old Casey gave the Mexican War and Greasers a rest. He was a tall, slim old fellow, carried himself as if steel ramrods were his regular diet, scorned to ride in an ambulance or wagon on a march, kept at the head of the regiment all the time, and went into all battles playing his liveliest tunes. At Shiloh, in the charge that broke up the “Hornet Nest,” old Casey was playing “Cheer, Boys, Cheer,” and the whole regiment singing it as they closed in with the Yanks. At the tale end of many a long day’s march, when everybody was footsore and weary, thinking and wishing for camp, marching any kind of old way, Casey would notice it, and strike up “The Girl I Left Behind Me” or “The Stump-Tail Dog.” The boys would forget about their weariness, close up, catch the step, and before we had gone an hundred feet, without a word from any officer, we would be sailing along like we were “passing in review.”