“In the days I speak of, Baltimore was fast emerging from the village state into a thriving commercial town. Lots were not yet sold by the foot,--except perhaps in the denser marts of business,--rather by the acre. It was in the _rus-in-urbe_ category. That fury for levelling had not yet possessed the souls of City Councils. We had our seven hills then, which have been rounded off since, and that locality which is now described as lying between the two parallels of North Charles Street and Calvert Street presented a steep and barren hillside, broken by rugged cliffs and deep ravines, washed out by the storms of winter into chasms which were threaded by paths of toilsome and difficult ascent. On the summit of one of these cliffs stood the old church of St. Paul’s [the second], some fifty paces or more to the eastward of the present church [the third], and surrounded by a brick wall that bounded on the present lines of Charles and Lexington Streets. This old building, ample and stately, looked abroad over half the town. It had a belfry tower, detached from the main structure, and keeping watch over a graveyard full of tombstones, remarkable to the observation of the boys and girls, who were drawn to it by the irresistible charm of the popular belief that it was haunted, and by the quantity of cherubim that seemed to be continually crying about the death’s-head and cross-bones at the doleful and comical epitaphs below them--images long since vanished, without a trace left, devoured by the voracious genius of brick and mortar.