Rockingham County, NC - Obituary of Laura Armand [date unknown]

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This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by
Lamar County (TX) Genealogical Society 

President
Ron Brothers
Paris, Lamar County, TX

  Reidsville, N. C., August 27. – Miss Laura Armand, a beautiful young 
brunette, queen of the demi monde, died in Danville, today under circumstances 
singular and sad. She died shuffling a pack of cards. She had for some time 
past been one of the belles in the dens of vice in Salisbury.  She was large 
and voluptuous in form and possessed a fine education, being an accomplished 
performer on the piano, and a brilliant conversationalist.  It was evident to 
all who met her that she had been a member of some family of refinement and 
culture. She was the acknowledged belle of the bagnio, and excited the jealous 
envy of her soiled sisters.

    Last week she went from Salisbury to Danville, on an excursion and took up 
her quarters there in a den of vice on Craighead street. Yesterday it was 
discovered that she was very ill, and one of her companions, unknown to her, 
went out and brought in a physician, who at once told her that she could not 
live over forty-eight hours. She received the intelligence calmly. She lived 
through the night, and this morning told her friends that it was her last night 
on earth. The doctor saw her this evening and said she could not live two hours. 
The intelligence that she was dying spread rapidly, and a crowd gathered in the 
room, many from curiosity to see how the young courtesan would die; but those 
who remained witnessed a sight that would haunt them long after, and the most 
hardened had tearful eyes.

    She called for a pack of cards and told one of the girls she could find them 
in her bureau. The cards were handed her. She took them and began to shuffle them 
nervously, and to gaze widely around the room. Then she called out: “Say, how much 
have you got to put up?” and dealt out the cards as if in play. Then her thoughts 
seem to wander from the imaginary game, seen only through the dim death-shadow 
which clouded her vision. She was thinking of the time when she was a child, for 
she rose wildly and cried:  “Oh, mother! Why are you not near your child? Mother, 
rest!: Then she began to shuffle the cards, and had thrown out nine on the table
 when she suddenly fell back on her couch dead, her hand still clutching the 
half-dealt pack.