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.

  Here Ingalls, sorrowing, has laid
  The tools of his infernal trade—­
  His pen and tongue.  So sharp and rude
  They grew—­so slack in gratitude,
  His hand was wounded as he wrote,
  And when he spoke he cut his throat.

  Within this humble mausoleum
    Poor Guiteau’s flesh you’ll find. 
  His bones are kept in a museum,
    And Tillman has his mind.

  Stranger, uncover; here you have in view
  The monument of Chauncey M. Depew. 
  Eater and orator, the whole world round
  For feats of tongue and tooth alike renowned. 
  Pauper in thought but prodigal in speech,
  Nothing he knew excepting how to teach. 
  But in default of something to impart
  He multiplied his words with all his heart: 
  When least he had to say, instructive most—­
  A clam in wisdom and in wit a ghost.