The sham fight goes on till toward sunset, when the regiment is dismissed at the signal of the evening gun. And now comes the hurry to reach home. Such reckless driving, such wild racing over the hills and along the rough roads and ledges, and such a desire to "take off somebody's wheel," you never saw, unless you have been to a muster-day before. This is a part of the fun; and if you do not take it as the correct thing, and enjoy it too, you might as well have stayed away from the muster altogether. FREDERIC G. MATHER. THE STORY OF A STORY. I. THE HEROINE. A horse-car, for all it is so common a sight, is not without its picturesque side. To stand on a long bridge at night, while the lights twinkle in the perspective, and watch one of these animated servants, with its colored globular eye, come scrambling toward you, is to see a clumsy, good-natured Caliban of this mechanical age. One of these days, when the horse-car is superseded by some electric skipping wicker-basket or what not, the Austin Dobson of the time will doubtless expend his light sympathy of verse on the pathetic old abandoned conveyance. Such picturesqueness, however, is rather for one who seeks, than a view which thrusts itself upon the merely casual observer. At any rate, another Austin,--Austin Buckingham,--who was engaged one winter evening at the end of a long bridge in idealizing horse-cars, hit upon this way of looking at the one he was waiting for, out of sheer desperation of intellect. He was a young _littérateur_ who was out of work. He was not, like other workmen in similar straits, going from one shop to another looking for a job. Not at all. He recognized the situation. He had only to write a clever story and he could quickly dispose of it. He had written a good many stories in his short day. Now he wished to write another. The pity of it was that he had no story to tell,--absolutely nothing. He had been through his note-books, but they gave him no help; he had kept his ears open for some suggestive little incident, but the whole world seemed suddenly given over to the dreariest commonplace. He had walked out this evening, slowly revolving in his mind the various odds and ends which came upon demand of his rag-picking memory, and yet nothing of value had turned up. He was tired, and determined to take a horse-car for the rest of the way.