Arizona republican., 1899-05-11

travelled back and forth between the firing line Cn the San Juan hill and the
 base cf operations at Siboney were
 utilized to the limit by the soldiers as
 postmen. They were called upon every
 day to carry letters by the dozen, and DoEtal cards by the score. In many cases the letters wcuid be unsea:ed for the lack cf an envelope which .hs writer would request the corresponGen. to supply, and then direct and niaJl his letter. In glancing through these let ters in order to direct them, and in looking alt the postal cards, the curre- so5ndents wha were laboring faith fully tc, keep informed as to the prog ress of the war, became painfully con- scious that they had been "scooped'' on mary startling facts, and on many Il good 'isacry' Facts were stated on
 many of these postal cards which up to that time had escaped the attention Of all save the man who now wrote them for the edification of those aL home.
 Deeds Of personal prowess, Of indi- vidual daring, were recCunted that must have passed unknown had not the hero seen fit to modestly depict himself as the man Of coura ge he ac- tualIy was. Most of these letters, by scrre strange accident, were directed to unmarried females in the Uni,ed States. The letters Of the married men were more prosaic and truthful as rule It may be- that ccnnubiality and veracity go hand in hand, or that 'Ghe married men had tried the thing before, and had been found out so often that they had given it up as a bad Job, and had therefore reformed How ever, it makes little difference what the cause, such were the facts. One private in the Thirty-third Michigan wrote on a postal card tc' a young wo- man in the Wolverine state:
 We have been here ten days. fight ing all the time, and nave been losing hundreds of men every day.
 This disposed of the Thirty-thlrd Michigan. Taking the lowest figure that can be used in the plural of 100, the regiment had been losing 200 men per day, for ten days, or a total of B. 900 men, The regiment never num- bered over 1900 men at the outside, so, according to this private, it had been wiped out, and 500 men over If he had told hIciw he had himself escaped this awful slaughter it would have been interesting. The chances are hundreds" to one that the gentle maiden in Michigan believed all she read.
 One man in the First District Of Col umbia wrote 9 long and graphic ac- count of how he led the charge up San Juan hill, place he never saw until it had been taken forty-eight hours
 7cI1t Jo tice Of reading the postal cards ir- trusted to lis care, fer the purpose of his own imagination, said ths't he had figured that the famous balloon that went up during the battle of July 1 carried 9 basket with a floor space two acres in extent. He cb- tained this result by allowing one square feet Of standing rc,oln fer every man who had claimed to have been in 1t dur Ing the fgtc.
 The battle would have been lost but | fer eur regiment was claimed time be- | yOnd number for practically every or sanitation that marched upon the field, | and fer several that never marched | cp0n is.
 One morning a correspondent pass ng to the front was asked by a work rg lrarty of the Seventy-first New CTk if he would take in their mail when he came back that way in the evening. Among the postal cards he 'eceived some hours later was one to gulible girl in New York, saying:
 This has been another day of ter tfic fighting. My escape has been 
 This hero had spent his day of tier
 . nd sloveling mud fer Cuban freedom, nd in burying some exceedingly dead nules for the glory of the stars and LrineS -Cdicagl Tribune