“‘The President and his lady will be at the theatre this evening.’
“Lincoln was fond of the theatre. I have myself seen him there several times. I remember thinking how funny it was that he, the leading actor in the greatest and stormiest drama known to real history’s stage, through centuries, should sit there and be so completely interested in those human jackstraws, moving about with their silly little gestures, foreign spirit, and flatulent text.
“So the day, as I say, was propitious. Early herbage, early flowers, were out. I remember where I was stopping at the time, the season being advanced, there were many lilacs in full bloom.
“By one of those caprices that enter and give tinge to events without being a part of them, I find myself always reminded of the great tragedy of this day by the sight and odor of these blossoms. It never fails.
“On this occasion the theatre was crowded, many ladies in rich and gay costumes, officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young folks, the usual cluster of gas lights, the usual magnetism of so many people, cheerful with perfumes, music of violins and flutes—and over all, that saturating, that vast, vague wonder, Victory, the nation’s victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the thought, the sense, with exhilaration more than all the perfumes.
“The President came betimes, and, with his wife, witnessed the play from the large stage boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one, and profusely draped with the national flag. The acts and scenes of the piece—one of those singularly witless compositions which have at the least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic or spiritual nature—a piece in which among other characters, so called, a Yankee—certainly such a one as was never seen, or at least like it ever seen in North America, is introduced in England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such phantasmagoria as goes to make up a modern popular drama—had progressed perhaps through a couple of its acts, when, in the midst of this comedy, or tragedy, or non-such, or whatever it is to be called, and to offset it, or finish it out, as if in Nature’s and the Great Muse’s mockery of these poor mimics, comes interpolated that scene, not really or exactly to be described at all (for on the many hundreds who were there it seems to this hour to have left little but a passing blur, a dream, a blotch)—and yet partially described as I now proceed to give it:
“There is a scene in the play, representing the modern parlor, in which two unprecedented ladies are informed by the unprecedented and impossible Yankee that he is not a man of fortune, and therefore undesirable for marriage-catching purposes; after which, the comments being finished, the dramatic trio make exit, leaving the stage clear for a moment.
“There was a pause, a hush, as it were. At this period came the death of Abraham Lincoln.
“Great as that was, with all its manifold train circling around it, and stretching into the future for many a century, in the politics, history, art, etc., of the New World, in point of fact, the main thing, the actual murder, transpired with the quiet and simplicity of any commonest occurrence—the bursting of a bud or pod in the growth of vegetation, for instance.
“Through the general hum following the stage pause, with the change of positions, etc., came the muffled sound of a pistol shot, which not one-hundredth part of the audience heard at the time—and yet a moment’s hush—somehow, surely a vague, startled thrill—and then, through the ornamented, draperied, starred and striped space-way of the President’s box, a sudden figure, a man, raises himself with hands and feet, stands a moment on the railing, leaps below to the stage, falls out of position, catching his boot heel in the copious drapery (the American flag), falls on one knee, quickly recovers himself, rises as if nothing had happened (he really sprains his ankle, unfelt then)—and the figure, Booth, the murderer, dressed in plain black broadcloth, bareheaded, with a full head of glossy, raven hair, and his eyes, like some mad animal’s, flashing with light and resolution, yet with a certain strange calmness holds aloft in one hand a large knife—walks along not much back of the footlights—turns fully towards the audience, his face of statuesque beauty, lit by those basilisk eyes, flashing with desperation, perhaps insanity—launches out in a firm and steady voice the words, ‘Sic semper tyrannis’—and then walks with neither slow nor very rapid pace diagonally across to the back of the stage, and disappears.