Dom Pedro, Emperor of far Brazil (Whence coffee comes and the three-cornered nut), They say that you're imperially ill, And threatened with paralysis. Tut-tut! Though Emperors are mortal, nothing but A nimble thunderbolt could catch and kill A man predestined to depart this life By the assassin's bullet, bomb or knife. Sir, once there was a President who freed Ten million slaves; and once there was a Czar Who freed five times as many serfs. Sins breed The means of punishment, and tyrants are Hurled headlong out of the triumphal car If faster than the law allows they speed. Lincoln and Alexander struck a rut; _You_ freed slaves too. Paralysis--tut-tut! 1885. TWO TYPES. Courageous fool!--the peril's strength unknown. Courageous man!--so conscious of your own. SOME ANTE-MORTEM EPITAPHS. STEPHEN DORSEY. Fly, heedless stranger, from this spot accurst, Where rests in Satan an offender first In point of greatness, as in point of time, Of new-school rascals who proclaim their crime. Skilled with a frank loquacity to blab The dark arcana of each mighty grab, And famed for lying from his early youth, He sinned secure behind a veil of truth. Some lock their lips upon their deeds; some write A damning record and conceal from sight; Some, with a lust of speaking, die to quell it. His way to keep a secret was to tell it. STEPHEN J. FIELD. Here sleeps one of the greatest students Of jurisprudence. Nature endowed him with the gift Of the juristhrift. All points of law alike he threw The dice to settle. Those honest cubes were loaded true With railway metal. GENERAL B.F. BUTLER. Thy flesh to earth, thy soul to God, We gave, O gallant brother; And o'er thy grave the awkward squad Fired into one another! Beneath this monument which rears its head. A giant note of admiration--dead, His life extinguished like a taper's flame. John Ericsson is lying in his fame. Behold how massive is the lofty shaft; How fine the product of the sculptor's craft; The gold how lavishly applied; the great Man's statue how impressive and sedate! Think what the cost-was! It would ill become Our modesty to specify the sum; Suffice it that a fair per cent, we're giving Of what we robbed him of when he was living. Of Corporal Tanner the head and the trunk Are here in unconsecrate ground duly sunk. His legs in the South claim the patriot's tear, But, stranger, you needn't be blubbering here. Jay Gould lies here. When he was newly dead He looked so natural that round his bed The people stood, in silence all, to weep. They thought, poor souls! that he did only sleep.