uchanan for Green-Wood cemetery."

"The Rev. Dr. Hawks," adds a second account, "was constantly at the
bedside of Lola Montez, and gave her the benefit of his pastoral care
as freely as if she had been a member of his own flock. He conducted
her obsequies in an impressive fashion; and Mr. Brown, his assistant,
who had himself attended so many funerals and weddings in his day,
was seen to wipe the tears from his eyes, as he heard the reverend
gentleman remark to Mrs. Buchanan that he had never met with an
example of more genuine penitence."

"Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?" enquired the Rev. Mr.
Hawks, as he stood addressing the company assembled round the grave.
He himself was assured that the description was thoroughly applicable
to the woman lying there.

"I never saw," he declared, "a more humble penitent. When I prayed
with her, nothing could exceed the fervour of her devotion; and never
have I had a more watchful and attentive hearer when I read the
Scriptures.... If ever a repentant soul loathed past sin, I believe
hers did."

Possibly, since it could scarcely have been Mrs. Buchanan, it was this
clerical busybody who was responsible for the inscription on Lola's
headstone:

MRS. ELIZA GILBERT

DIED

JANUARY 17, 1861.

An odd mask under which to shelter the identity of the gifted woman
who, given in baptism the names Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna, had
flashed across three continents as Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld.

[Illustration: _Grave of Lola Montez, in Green-wood Cemetery, New
York_

(_Photo by Miss Ida U. Mellen, New York_)]

IV

Misrepresented as she had been in her life, Lola Montez was even more
misrepresented after her death. The breath was scarcely out of her
body, when a flood of cowardly scurrilities was poured from the gutter
press. Her good deeds were forgotten; only her derelictions were
remembered.

One such obituary notice began:

"A woman who, in the full light of the nineteenth century,
renewed all the scandals that disgraced the Middle Ages,
and, with an audacity that is almost unparalleled, seated
herself upon the steps of a throne, is worthy of mention; if
only to show to what extent vice can sometimes triumph, and
to what a fall it can eventually come."

An editorial, which was published in one of the New York papers,
contained some odd passages:

"Among the most ardent admirers of Lola Montez was a young
S