The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton by Hannah Webster Foster
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page 14 of 212 (06%)
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a secret, preconcerted sign by which the lover should recognize the
place of her retreat; and being too faintly drawn, through the darkness of the night he failed to discover the characters. From this time, however, the spirits of the stranger evidently sunk; and in two weeks more birth and death had followed each other, and the grave had closed over all. This stranger had, in her peculiar situation, tenderly won upon the sympathies of a few kind-hearted individuals who had made their way to her, one of whom, a Mrs. Southwick, lived directly opposite the Bell Tavern. These were with her in her last great agony, in which all sense of guilt was lost in pity. Mrs. S. has related that no word of complaint or accusation was heard to fall from her lips, while the spirit seemed brightening with an unearthly hope, till what was charming in life was indescribably lovely in death. Thus they laid the beautiful stranger in the saintly robes of the sepulchre without censure and without accusation, not knowing how painfully she was mourned and missed, as a star shut out of vision by clouds and storm, in the home of her childhood and in the heart of a widowed mother. She had passed under the assumed name of Walker while at the Bell Tavern of Danvers, and her wardrobe was found marked with the corresponding initials, "E.W.," although applying to her real name as well. These facts, in connection with her death, were immediately published in the Boston and Salem journals, and her friends advertised to appear; and thus were her real name and place of residence elicited. A short time afterwards, and a stranger came and caused to be erected in the old burying ground in Danvers, on the spot where she was interred, |
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