Spirit Of The Age

A Trinity Tombstone.

Tender interest clings round an unpretentious and almost undiscovered tomb in Trinity Church yard, which is seen by but few; it lies so close to Broadway that it may almost be touched from the sidewalk. All old New Yorkers at least will recall the melancholy story of a young and most beautiful girl, who, nigh upon a hundred years ago, was taken from a boarding-school by a British officer of high rank and by him betrayed and deserted. Discarded by her friends, she with her child were found by her father in wretched quarters, both at the point of death. The heart-broken parent was just in time to receive her last sigh and to close her eyes for ever. The pitiful story was written out in book-form, and was dramatized and played in every theatre then in the country, thus becoming familiar as household words to thousands who had no personal knowledge of any of the parties. Years thereafter the officer made such tardy reparation as he could, by placing a stone table with an expensive silver head-plate over the remains of his dead victims. This silver plate has been wrenched off and stolen by sacrilegious thieves, and now all that remains to mark the last resting place of these unhappy ones is a plain brown stone slab, lying level with the paved walks in Trinity Church yard, and bearing but these two words "CHARLOTTE TEMPLE."