One and another, who had been concealing
    The pain of life’s long thrall,
  Forsook their pleasant places, and came stealing
    Outside the city wall,

  Craving, with wish that brooked no more denying,
    So long had it been crossed,
  The blessed possibility of dying,—­
    The treasure they had lost.

  Daily the current of rest-seeking mortals
    Swelled to a broader tide,
  Till none were left within the city’s portals,
    And graves grew green outside.

  Would it be worth the having or the giving,
    The boon of endless breath? 
  Ah, for the weariness that comes of living
    There is no cure but death!

  Ours were indeed a fate deserving pity,
    Were that sweet rest denied;
  And few, methinks, would care to find the city
    Where never any died!

* * * * *

Does the reader recall DEAN SWIFT’S account of the immortal Strudlbrugs and their undying miseries—­it is in the City of Laputu, we believe.  Their life was passed as if in such a city.  Ah, death! it is, after all, only birth in another form.  And to step to the ridiculous, we are reminded of an

  EPITAPH IN A DEDHAM CHURCHYARD.

  I’ve paid the debt which all must pay,
  Though awful to my view,
  On frightful rocks where billows poured,
  And broken buildings flew. 
  The cruel Death has conquered me;
  The victory is but small,
  For I shall rise and live again,—­
  And Death himself shall fall.

* * * * *

There are not many of those who ‘read the papers,’ who have not met from time to time with the quaint experiences of THE FAT CONTRIBUTOR,—­a gentleman who, in the columns of the Buffalo Republican, and more recently in the spicy Cleveland Plain Dealer, has often wished that his too, too solid flesh would melt.  It is with pleasure that we welcome him to our pages in the following original sketch:—­

THE ‘FAT CONTRIBUTOR’ AS A GYMNAST.

  ‘But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks.’

  RICHARD III.

Says the cardinal in the play—­’In the bright lexicon of youth there’s no such word as fail.’  Without stopping to discuss the reliability of a lexicon that omits words in that careless manner, I must say that in the dictionary of fat men who aspire to gymnastics that word distinctly occurs.  I had my misgivings, but was over-persuaded by my friends.  They said gymnastics would develop muscular strength, thus enabling me to hold my flesh in case it attempted to run away.  They added, as an additional incentive, that the spectacle of a man who weighs nearly three hundred pounds, doing the horizontal ladder, climbing a slack-rope hand over hand, or suspending his weight by his little finger, would be a ‘big thing.’  I asked them how I was to attain that end.  ‘By practice,’