The “beautiful cigar girl” furnished another mystery and an excuse for revolting journalism. RoBards had bought tobacco of her during his exile in town and had watched with sardonic disdain the wily smiles she passed across the counter to her customers who came more for flirtation than for weeds. One day she vanished and after a time her body was found drifting in the river near the Sibyl’s Cave in the beautiful Elysian Fields at Hoboken. She had evidently fought a desperate battle with her murderer, but had been flung bruised and beaten into the water. Her murderer was never discovered. People said he was a naval officer, but they could not prove it. One of the cheap and popular newspaper men named Edgar Allan Poe made an ephemeral mystery story out of it. It was exciting but, of course, not literature. His name was never included in the list of dignified authors whom the defenders of American art compiled to prove to the English critics that good writing was possible on this side of the Atlantic. Dr. Lardner came over from England and proved conclusively that steam was impracticable for crossing the ocean. Shortly afterward a steamer brought across the popular English serial writer, Charles Dickens, and the people lavished on him attentions which he rewarded with infuriating contempt. Captain Marryat and other Englishmen, and women like Mrs. Trollope, began a book bombardment against the pride of the new republic, and roused it to fury. But all the while the city panted like a hart for its Croton water brooks, and the engineers redoubled their efforts. They decided not to wait for the High Bridge and improvised a temporary passage across and under the Harlem River. The hope was revived that water would come into the city on Independence Day. Swarms of masons toiled at the two reservoirs until they stood at last waiting, like vast empty bowls held up to heaven for a new Deluge. The flood was to be received at the Yorkville reservoir, carried on by iron pipes to Murray’s Hill, and distributed thence by pipes about the city, with a special dispensation to the old well and tank that had been erected in 1829 at Thirteenth Street to feed the hydrants that replaced the foul old public cisterns. Everywhere the streets and the houses were torn to pieces, pipes were laid in all directions and fountains built. The plumber was the hero of the hour. The test of fashion was a faucet in the kitchen. On a hot day in June the Water Commissioners and the engineers, including Harry Chalender, began a strange pilgrimage through the thirty-three miles of tunnel, for a last anxious inspection. It took them three days to make the patrol on foot.