Flame-colored leaves are falling on the slopes of East Auburn’s Mt. Gile, or White Oak Hill, as it’s also known. They float down on a nearly hidden granite shaft and a boulder surrounded by a rusting iron railing.

It’s here, a few hundred yards from the traffic of busy Route 4 at Lake Auburn, that a young girl’s life ended 140 years ago under heart-rending circumstances. The event might have been forgotten, but that was a time when inflexible propriety shaped our society.

The lonely hillside monument (on private property) marks the spot where the body of 22-year-old M. Louise Greene of Peru, Maine, was found months after she fled Kents Hill Seminary 30 miles away. It all began two weeks before her May 1866 graduation. She had been charged with taking $5 from a teacher’s purse, and she admitted it. She also was accused of thefts of clothing and possession of a skeleton key. They might be called minor offenses in today’s world, but they were major indications of flawed character in her time.

She was brought before the headmaster, Benjamin Torsey, who told her she would not graduate with her class.

Family and school officials searched for Louise for weeks. According to newspaper accounts, a hunter found her in October 1866 at the base of an overhanging boulder on Mount Gile. Her head was pillowed on one arm and her other hand held a shawl about her neck. Her hat and bag were neatly placed atop the boulder.

At some point, Louise had written a farewell letter to her sister. In it she said, “I could have died for one friendly hand clasp and thought it happiness to die.” Those words are engraved on the monument.

The episode might have faded in memory as an unfortunate suicide, but her father’s grief and efforts to refute the facts of the case kept the cauldron of public controversy boiling for a long time.

In an effort to vindicate his daughter, Jonas Greene published a pamphlet titled “Crown Won But Not Worn.” It contained passionate outbursts such as:

“She fled from this man (Dr. Torsey) as a tiger – fled from classmates, teachers, room-mate and all her friends on earth. Alone, shunning everybody she knew, she went to Lewiston, walked to the solitary forest and to the couch of her death.”

He sent letter after letter to newspapers with bitter counter-accusations against Dr. Torsey and the seminary. This led to support of the seminary from judges, lawyers, clergymen, educators – even a senator and the governor of Maine.

While the father’s grief is understandable, a reader’s sympathy might not stand up to a statement in the booklets. Printed on the fly leaf is the following:

“It being the object of the writer to circulate this pamphlet as extensively as possible, he offers it at a very low price.” He also offers “a fair discount” to re-sellers.

The booklets sold well, and Kents Hill Seminary printed a carefully documented booklet called “Libel Refuted: A Reply to Greene’s Pamphlet.”

A final booklet was printed 48 years after Louise’s death by L-A attorney George Wing Jr. It was called “The Lugubrious Tale and Doleful Death of Louise Greene,” and it sorted out much of the fact and controversy.

Occasionally, reporters revive this story to make the point that today’s young people have better opportunities to rectify a mistake. Nevertheless, we still struggle with the line between sensationalism and sensitivity.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and an Auburn native. You can e-mail him at [email protected].