e of Lola Montez, earnestly requesting me to visit her and minister
to her spiritual wants. She had been stricken down by a paralysis of
her left side. For some days she was unconscious, and her death seemed
to be at hand. She had, however, rallied, and a most benevolent
Christian female, who had been her schoolmate in Scotland in the days
of her girlhood, and knew her well, had stepped forward and provided
for the temporal comfort of the afflicted companion of her childhood.
The real name of Lola Montez was Eliza G., and she was of respectable
family in Ireland, where she was born."

But neither the Rev. Mr. Hawks, with his oiliness and smug piety, nor
Mrs. Buchanan, with her true womanly sympathy and understanding, could
bring Lola Montez back to health, any more than--for all their pills
and purges--could the doctors and nurses round her bed. She lay there,
day after day, aware of their presence, but unable to move or speak.
Yet, able to think. Thoughts crowded upon her in a series of flashing
pictures; a bewildering phantasmagoria, coming out of the shadows, and
beckoning to her. Childhood's memories of India; hot suns, marching
men, palanquins and elephants; Montrose and a dour Calvinism; Bath and
Sir Jasper Nicolls; love's young dream; Lieutenant James and the
runaway marriage in Dublin; another experience of India's coral
strand; kind-hearted Captain Craigie and hard-hearted George Lennox;
the Consistory Court proceedings; fiasco at Her Majesty's Theatre;
Ranelagh and Lumley; _wanderjahre_ and odyssey; Paris and Dujarier;
Ludwig and the steps of a throne; passion and poetry; intrigues and
liaisons; Cornet Heald and Patrick Hull; voyages from the old world to
the new; mining camps and backwoods; palaces and conventicles;
glittering triumphs and abject failures. And now, gasping and
struggling for breath, the end.

The sands were running out. The days slipped away, and, with them, the
last vitality of the woman who had once been so full of life and the
joy of living.

The doctors did what they could. But it was very little, for Lola
Montez was beyond their help. The end was fast at hand. It came with
merciful swiftness. On January 17, 1861, she turned her face to the
wall and drew a last shuddering breath.

"I am very tired," she whispered.

The funeral took place two days later. "Accompanied by some of our
most respected citizens and their families," says an eye-witness, "the
cortege left the house of Mrs. B