OF JVE W YORK CITY.                      Jga
 

CHAPTER. XV.

Pacts are stranger than fiction. I cannot write a
story. It is not my nature to do it. People who know
me and my style, say I have no imagination ; and then
the idea of my writing a story or novel, to be unmerci¬
fully but justly criticised by the sensible and pretty Ada
Clare, is too much for me to undertake ; and though Mr.
John Clancy has tried to press me into bis sensational
corps, he has failed. I confess I have no fancy, but
wdien he comes to facts I am always on hand.

The following narrative is as true as gospel I have
before me the old newspaper, and I have been to the
Record Office to see the conveyance of the vast pro¬
perty. The way I came to investigate the subject was
this.

1 was looking over a file of the Morning Chronicle
f<ir 1806, when I came across the following in a Janu¬
ary number,

$1,000 reward will be paid for any information tliat can he given
of a nurse niimed Milly Seymour, wlio in the year ISO.'j lived for
several months in the upper part of a two-story brielt house in
Maiden lane, two doors below Nassua .street, on the soutli side:
or of a male child, named Rupert, then a babe ; or of lier husband,
William Seymour.    Apply to Mrs. I., at No. 22 Courtlandt street.

It struck me as funny.    I read  it a dozen times.    1