“I can’t believe it either!” exclaimed Ethel, tears raining down her cheeks, “but read it aloud, won’t you, Mrs. Ray?”
“I can’t—I can’t! the tears come so fast. You—you may,” thrusting the paper into Ethel’s hand.
The young girl did as requested, but with many a pause to wipe away the falling tears and check the sobs that well-nigh choked her utterance.
She had not finished when Mrs. Baker and her boys returned, all three weeping.
“Oh, mother, mother, so you’ve got the news! I thought you would before we could get home, for it has gone over the city like wildfire, and almost everybody’s heartbroken!” cried Mrs. Baker, laying on the counter a parcel she carried and wiping her streaming eyes.
“Not just everybody, mother; you forget that mean, bad woman we saw get paid off so well in the market,” exclaimed Mark, the eldest boy, his eyes flashing through tears. “You and Miss Ethel should have seen it, grandmother. We were buying some fish for dinner, the fishwoman and everybody round talking about the dreadful news, and most of them crying to think of dear, good President Lincoln being murdered, when up came a woman dressed in her best—at least I should think it might be her very best—and she says to the fishwoman, ‘How much do you ask for these fine shad? I’ll buy one, for I’m bound and determined to have an extra good dinner to-day to show how delighted I am at the good news I’ve heard.’ ‘And what may that be?’ the other woman asked. ‘Why, that that old tyrant, Abe Lincoln, is killed!’ and she’d hardly got the words out when that big shad was flapping round her ears in the liveliest kind of a way; and it went on flapping till it was all broken to pieces, her face smeared with the fish, and her bonnet crushed and broken and soiled till nobody would ever want to wear it again.”
“Just what she deserved,” said his grandmother. “I can’t pity her in the least.”
“And nobody did,” said Mark exultingly; “the crowd around just cheered the fishwoman, and groaned and hissed at the other, till she was glad to hurry away as fast as she could. There, mother, now you tell about what we saw and heard on Walnut Street.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Baker. “As we were coming home along that street a servant girl was scrubbing off the pavement in front of one of those big, handsome residences, and, a gentleman going past, she hailed him with, ‘An’ it’s the good news we’ve got this marnin’, sor; that ould Lincoln’s shot to death an’ won’t nivver——’ But there he interrupted her, his eyes fairly flashing with anger and his fists clenched. ‘If you weren’t a woman I’d knock you down!’ he said in a tone as if it would be a great satisfaction to him to do it. Then the gentleman of the house came to the door (I had seen him step to the parlor window as the girl began her remark) and said in a tone as if he would enjoy knocking her down, ‘You may consider yourself dismissed from my service, Bridget. You shall never enter my doors again with my knowledge and consent. I’ll have your clothes sent out to you and you may go at once.’”
“I don’t blame him,” said a lady customer who had just come in; “it was exactly what she deserved. Think of anybody being so heartless as to rejoice in such a murder—the assassination of a man so patient and kind to all, desirous to have rebels forgiven who in any other country would be speedily executed for their attempt to destroy the government. People’s hearts are very sore,” she went on, weeping as she spoke, “and no wonder they cannot and will not stand hearing any rejoicing over this terrible calamity that has befallen the country—the dear land just saved from the dismemberment which threatened it! They are draping the public buildings with black, putting all the flags at half mast, and tying them with crape. Men shed tears; some women will wear deep mourning as for a near relative; others rosettes of the national colors and black ribbon. I came in here to look for the ribbons needed for mine.”