In St. Louis’s Bellefontaine Cemetery stands a beautiful marble sculpture encased in a stone chamber with a glass window, commonly referred to as “Bessie, the Girl in the Shadow Box.” It does not depict a person buried there, but a girl for whom a local man longed. Herman Luyties, owner of the first proprietary drugstore in St. Louis and one of the pioneers of homeopathy in the area, visited Italy in the early 1900s. During this trip he fell for a beautiful girl who was modeling for the Genoese sculptor…
