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 NEW YORK (AP) - The young man bent over his dying father in a dimly lit room, trying to hear the slightest breath. It was too late. Seabury Tredwell was gone forever, lying motionless in his bed.
For the next few days, the perfume of lillies drifted through the Manhattan town house as the wealthy merchant's body lay in a coffin in the front parlor. There was no embalming in 19th-century New York and the odor of decay had to be masked.
The scene was first played out in 1865, but was recently re-enacted at a museum that has been called New York's "most haunted house." The Merchant's House Museum preserves the 19th century home as it was when Tredwell lived there with his wife and eight children, plus Irish immigrant girls who worked for them.
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