Memoirs of an American Prima Donna

by Clara Louise Kellogg

THE Civil War was now coming to its close. Abraham Lincoln was the hero of the day, as he has been of all days since, in America. The White House was besieged with people from all walks of life, persistently anxious to shake hands with the War President, and he used to have to stand, for incredible lengths of time, smiling and hand-clasping. But he was ever a fine economist of energy and he flatly refused to talk. No one could get out of him more than a smile, a nod, or possibly a brief word of greeting.

One man made a bet that he would have some sort of conversation with the President while he was shaking hands with him.

"No, you won't," said the man to whom he was speaking, "I'll bet you that you won't get more than two words out of him!"

"I bet I will," said the venturesome one; and he set off to try his luck.

He went to the White House reception and, when his turn came and his hand was in the huge presidential grasp, he began to talk hastily and volubly, hoping to elicit some response. Lincoln listened a second, gazing at him gravely with his deep-set eyes, and then he laid an enormous hand in a loose, wrinkled white glove across his back.

"Don't dwell!" said he gently to his caller; and shoved him along, amiably but relentlessly, with the rest of the line. So the man got only his two words after all.

One week before the President was murdered I was in Washington and sat in the exact place in which he sat when he was shot. It was the same box, the same chair, and on Friday too,—one week to the day and hour before the tragedy. When I heard the terrible news I was able to picture exactly what it had been like. I could see just the jump that Booth must have had to make to get away. I never knew Wilkes Booth personally nor saw him act, but I have several times seen him leaving his theatre after a performance, with a raft of adoring matinée girls forming a more or less surreptitous guard afar off. He was a tremendously popular idol and strikingly handsome. Even after his wicked crime there were many women who professed a sort of hysterical sympathy and pity for him. Somebody has said that there would always be at least one woman at the death-bed of the worst criminal in the world if she could get to it; and there were hundreds of the sex who would have been charmed to watch beside Booth's, bad as he was and crazy into the bargain. It is a mysterious thing, the fascination that criminals have for some people, particularly women. Perhaps it is fundamentally a respect for accomplishment; admiration for the doing of something, good or evil, that they would not dare to do themselves.

We had all gone to Chicago for our spring opera season and were ready to open, when the tragic tidings came and shut down summarily upon every preparation for amusement of any kind. Every city in the Union went into mourning for the man whom the country idolised; of whom so many people spoke as our "Abraham Lincoln." Perhaps it was because of this universal and almost personal affection that the authorities did such an odd thing—or, at least, it struck me as odd,—with his body. He was taken all over the country and "lay-in-state," as it is called, in different court houses in different states.

I was stopping in the Grand Pacific Hotel when the body was brought to Chicago, and my windows overlooked the grounds of the Court House of that city. Business was entirely suspended, not simply for a few memorial moments as was the case when President McKinley was killed, but for many hours during the "lying-in-state." This, however, was probably only partly official. Everyone was so afraid that he would not be able to see the dead hero's face that business men all over the town suspended occupation, closed shops and offices, and made a pilgrimage to the Court House. All citizens were permitted to go into the building and look upon the Martyr President, and vast numbers availed themselves of the privilege—waited all night, indeed, to claim it. From sunset to sunrise the grounds were packed with a silent multitude. The only sound to be heard was the shuffling echo of feet as one person after another went quietly into the Court House, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle,—I can hear it yet. There was not a word uttered. There was no other sound than the sound of the passing feet. One thing that must have been official was that, for quite a long time, not a wheel in the city was allowed to turn. This was an impressive tribute to a man whom the whole American nation loved and counted a friend.

The only diversion in the whole melancholy solemnity of it all was the picking of pockets. The crowds were enormous, the people in a mood of sentiment and off their guard, and the army of crooks did a thriving business. It is a sickening thing to realise that in all hours of great national tragedy or terror there will always be people degenerate enough to take advantage of the suffering and ruin about them. Burning or plague-stricken cities have to be put under military law; and it is said that to the multiplied horrors of the San Francisco earthquake the people look back with a shudder to the ghastly system of looting which prevailed afterwards in the stricken city.