HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 



(circumstantially true.) 



HE war was not quite over, but my 

 regiment was old enough to have grown 

 too small for a colonel, and I sat, the 

 dismallest of all men, a " mustered-out " officer, 

 sated with such good things as a suddenly ar- 

 rested income had allowed me, over an after- 

 dinner table in a little room at the Athenaeum 

 Club. My coffee was gone to its dregs ; the 

 closing day was shutting down gloomily in such 

 a weary rain as only a New York back -yard 

 ever knows ; and I was wondering what was to 

 become of a man whom four years of cavalry 

 service had estranged from eveiy good and use- 

 ful thing in life. The only career that then 

 seemed worth running was run out for me ; and, 

 worst of all, my pay had been finally stopped. 



