To feel no death-damp, gathering cold and colder, Disputing life's warm truth-- To live on, never lonelier or older, Radiant in deathless youth! And hurrying from the world's remotest quarters A tide of pilgrims flowed Across broad plains and over mighty waters, To find that blest abode, Where never death should come between, and sever Them from their loved apart-- Where they might work, and will, and live forever, Still holding heart to heart. And so they lived, in happiness and pleasure, And grew in power and pride, And did great deeds, and laid up stores of treasure, And never any died. And many yers rolled on, and saw them striving With unabated breath, And other years still found and left them living, And gave no hope of death. Yet listen, hapless soul whom angels pity, Craving a boon like this-- Mark how the dwellers in the wondrous city Grew weary of their bliss. 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.