BESIDE LOVERS’ COFFIN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 49, 14 October 1918, Page 2

BESIDE LOVERS’ COFFIN.

SWEETHEART’S MIDNIGHT VISIT'S TO MORTUARY. PLACES FLOATERS ON BIER. Amid the cheerless environs of a mortuary lies the body of a beautiful girl of twenty. She rests in a glass-covered coffin, a smile upon her lips, and with features as carefully preserved as they were when they pulsed with life and love and hope some 15 years ago. TTie body has remained unclaimed through all the years, though nob forgotten, for at regular periods a lover, whose identity has remained a secret, quietly slips into the dreary and gruesome death chamber to deposit beautiful roses upon the casket and gaze at the face of the woman he had loved in life. . The young woman, fair and wingome, "left her home in an Illinois town to become the wife of a prosperous merchant, much older than herself. The lore she craved was withheld, because her husband was wrapped up in business affairs. One night tlie young bride stole silently away, ana, though she was sought and ultimately found, she refused to return to her husband, and took up her life in St. Louis, where she found work and supported herself meaejerly, too proud to appeal to her husband for the care he would have given her. One day she accidentally met a young man, a struggling youth who was ambitious to become a lawyer, but was without means aside from his Pittance obtained in an attorney’s office. hen friendship ripened into love, as they were drawn together by mutual understanding of each other s struggle and difficulties. The girl planned for -a divorce and the young _ man pledged his scanty funds to aid her purpose. IN DEATH AS IN LIFE.

One evening the young man called at the girl’s shabby, apartment. He found her dead. An autopsy revealed that she had died from a natural cause, a malady of the heart. The newspapers told of tho finding of the body of the young woman, and a few hours later the deserted husband appeared and identified the remains as those of Ins young wife. He promised to return later to a - range for the burial, and requested that the body be carefully embalmed. Then he disappeared and never returned. The body, with its glass-coVered coffin, was placed in a corner of the death room, and some hours later, a man’s broken voice came over the telephone, requesting that tho body of the girl be held until further orders that night the death chamber had a visitor, and oi the casket reposed a bouquet of roses and a note. The contents of the note were not divulged by the undertakers, but the body of the girl remained unburied. That was fifteen years ago. Through some mysterious potency ot the embalming fluid the girl s body has remained as it was in Inc. Twelve times during tlie fifteen years the undertakers have found fresh flowers on the glass above the mrl a smiling face. Each time the lid ot the case has been found open and the hair revealing the touch of a caressing hand. Occasionally a note is found, a word of thanks for keeping; the promise to save the body from the tomb. The undertakers declare they will never bury the body until the faithful lover cither reveals his identity or eventually fails to return to pay his tribute of love to all that remains, earthly, of the one he loved and lost.