There is a scene in the play representing a modern
parlor in which two unprecedented English ladies are inform'd by the
impossible Yankee that he is not a man of fortune, and therefore
undesirable for marriage-catching purposes; after which, the comments
being finish'd, the dramatic trio make exit, leaving the stage clear
for a moment. At this period came the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
Great as all its manifold train, circling round it, and stretching
into the future for many a century, in the politics, history, art,
&c., 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, 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, starr'd 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, (a distance of perhaps fourteen or fifteen feet,) 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 happen'd, (he really sprains his ankle, but unfelt
then)--and so the figure, Booth, the murderer, dress'd in plain black
broadcloth, bare-headed, with full, 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 from the footlights--turns fully toward 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.
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