d happiness,
and then we will go back to Illinois and pass the rest of our lives in
quiet. We have laid by some money, and during this time, we will save
up more, but shall not have enough to support us. We will go back
to Illinois; I will open a law office at Springfield or Chicago and
practise law, and at least do enough to help give us a livelihood."(11)

They returned from their drive and prepared for a theatre party which
had been fixed for that night. The management of the Ford's Theatre,
where Laura Keene was to close her season with a benefit performance
of Our American Cousin, had announced in the afternoon paper that "the
President and his lady" would attend. The President's box had been
draped with flags. The rest is a twice told tale--a thousandth told
tale.

An actor, very handsome, a Byronic sort, both in beauty and temperament,
with a dash perhaps of insanity, John Wilkes Booth, had long meditated
killing the President. A violent secessionist, his morbid imagination
had made of Lincoln another Caesar. The occasion called for a Brutus.
While Lincoln was planning his peaceful war with the Vindictives,
scheming how to keep them from grinding the prostrate South beneath
their heels, devising modes of restoring happiness to the conquered
region, Booth, at an obscure boarding-house in Washington, was gathering
about him a band of adventurers, some of whom at least, like himself,
were unbalanced. They meditated a general assassination of the Cabinet.
The unexpected theatre party on the fourteenth gave Booth a sudden
opportunity. He knew every passage of Ford's Theatre. He knew,
also, that Lincoln seldom surrounded himself with guards. During the
afternoon, he made his way unobserved into the theatre and bored a hole
in the door of the presidential box, so that he might fire through it
should there be any difficulty in getting the door open.

About ten o'clock that night, the audience was laughing at the absurd
play; the President's party were as much amused as any. Suddenly, there
was a pistol shot. A moment more and a woman's voice rang out in a sharp
cry. An instant sense of disaster brought the audience startled to
their feet. Two men were glimpsed struggling toward the front of the
President's box. One broke away, leaped down on to the stage, flourished
a knife and shouted, "Sic semper tyrannis!" Then he vanished through the
flies. It was Booth, whose plans had been completely successful. He had
made his