e was truly very ill.
Two of Alexandria's good Samaritans were informed of the pitiful little
sick girl's condition and Mrs. John S. Wise and Mrs. James Stuart took
their turns with the invalid. The husband proved himself devoted and
fairly daft with anxiety, and 'twas said rarely left the bedside. The
young woman grew rapidly worse. The skillful nursing, the constant
and faithful attendance of the physicians were all useless, and after an
illness of several weeks, the Female Stranger died. Thus she has been
remembered in Alexandria, for a very curious thing had occurred. The
doctors and volunteer nurses were asked to take an oath before ever they
entered that sick chamber, and swore never to reveal aught that they
heard, saw, or learned. That oath they kept. The young woman's name, her
destination, her former habitation, have never been revealed, and her
secrets lie buried with her.

[Illustration: The Coffee House or City Tavern which later was run as
one with Gadsby's Tavern and City Hotel. Headquarters for Washington and
the Alexandria Militia in 1754]

Many are the stories that survive. Some say the husband decamped without
paying his host, doctors, and nurses. Others that he had eloped with
this girl of good family and destroyed her reputation, and so brought
about her death. One story claims that he was a criminal and was seen in
prison by a gentleman from Alexandria, and others far more romantic
tell of his reappearance at stated intervals in Alexandria when he was
observed prostrate upon the tomb. Whatever his own story, he placed the
mortal remains of the little stranger in St. Paul's Cemetery and covered
her with a table tomb which is inscribed with the equally mysterious
inscription:

To the memory of a Female Stranger Whose mortal sufferings terminated
On the fourteenth day of October, 1816.

This stone is erected by her disconsolate Husband in whose arms she
sighed out her last breath, and who under God did his utmost to sooth
the cold, dull hour of death.

How loved, how honor'd once avails thee not,
To whom related or by whom begot.
A heap of dust remains of thee
'Tis all thou are, and all the proud shall be.

In 1808 the celebrated actress, Anne Warren, known as the "ornament of
the American stage," was acting at the new theatre, Liberty Hall, just
across from the Tavern on Cameron Street. While stopping at Gadsby's she
became ill and died. (Not