it, or finish it out, as
if in Nature's and the Great Muse's mockery of these poor mimics, comes
interpolated that scene, not really or exactly to be described at all
(for on the many hundreds who were there it seems to this hour to have
left little but a passing blur, a dream, a blotch)--and yet partially
described as I now proceed to give it:

"There is a scene in the play, representing the modern parlor, in
which two unprecedented ladies are informed by the unprecedented
and impossible Yankee that he is not a man of fortune, and therefore
undesirable for marriage-catching purposes; after which, the comments
being finished, the dramatic trio make exit, leaving the stage clear for
a moment.

"There was a pause, a hush, as it were. At this period came the death of
Abraham Lincoln.

"Great as that was, with all its manifold train circling around it, and
stretching into the future for many a century, in the politics, history,
art, etc., 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, etc., 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, starred 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, 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 happened (he really sprains his ankle, unfelt then)--and the figure,
Booth, the murderer, dressed in plain black broadcloth, bareheaded, with
a full head of 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 of the
footlights--turns fully towards 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 th