The third condemned, although whimpering, had far more grit than I anticipated; he was inquisitive and flippant-faced, and looked at the noose flaunting before him, and the people gathered below, and the haggard face of Atzerott, as if entirely conscious and incapable of abstraction.
Harold would have enjoyed this execution vastly as a spectator. He was, I think, capable of a greater degree of depravity than any of his accomplices. Atzerott might have made a sneak thief, Booth a forger, but Harold was not far from a professional pickpocket. He was keen-eyed, insolent, idle, and, by a small experience in Houston street, would have been qualified for a first-class "knuck." He had not, like the rest, any political suggestion for the murder of the heads of the nation; and upon the gallows, in his dirty felt hat, soiled cloth coat, light pantaloons and stockings, he seemed unworthy of his manacles.
A very fussy Dutchman tied him up and fanned him, and he wept forgetfully, but did not make a halt or absurd spectacle.
Atzerott was my ideal of a man to be hung—a dilution of Wallack's rendering of the last hours of Fagan, the Jew; a sort of sick man, quite garrulous and smitten, with his head thrown forward, muttering to the air, and a pallidness transparent through his dirt as he jabbered prayers and pleas confusedly, and looked in a complaining sort of way at the noose, as if not quite certain that it might not have designs upon him.
He wore a greyish coat, black vest, light pantaloons and slippers, and a white affair on his head, perhaps a handkerchief.
His spiritual adviser stood behind him, evidently disgusted with him.
Atzerott lost his life through too much gabbing. He could have had serious designs upon nothing greater than a chicken, but talked assassination with the silent and absolute Booth, until entrapped into conspiracy and the gallows, much against his calculation. This man was visited by his mother and a poor, ignorant woman with whom he cohabited. He was the picture of despair, and died ridiculously, whistling up his courage.
These were the dramatis personę, no more to be sketched, no more to be cross-examined, no more to be shackled, soon to be cold in their coffins.
They were, altogether, a motley and miserable set. Ravaillae might have looked well swinging in chains; Charlotte Corday is said to have died like an actress; Beale hung not without dignity, but these people, aspiring to overturn a nation, bore the appearance of a troop of ignorant folks, expiating the blood-shed of a brawl.
When General Hartrauft ceased reading there was momentary lull, broken only by the cadences of the priests.