ge to events without being at all a
part of them, I find myself always reminded of the great tragedy of
that day by the sight and odor of these blossoms. It never fails.

On this occasion the theatre was crowded, many ladies in rich and gay
costumes, officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young
folks, the usual clusters of gas-lights, the usual magnetism of so
many people, cheerful, with perfumes, music of violins and flutes--and
over all, and saturating, that vast, vague wonder, Victory, the
Nation's victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the
thought, the sense, with exhilaration more than all perfumes.

The President came betimes and, with his wife, witnessed the play,
from the large stage boxes of the second tier, two thrown into one,
and profusely draped with the National flag. The acts and scenes of
the piece--one of those singularly witless compositions which have at
least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in
mental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it
makes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic
or spiritual nature--a piece ("Our American Cousin") in which, among
other characters so called, a Yankee, certainly such a one as was
never seen, or at least ever seen in North America, is introduced in
England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such
phantasmagoria as goes to make up a modern popular drama--had
progressed through perhaps a couple of its acts, when in the midst of
this comedy, or tragedy, or non-such, or whatever it is to be called,
and to offset it, or finish it out, as if in Nature's and the Great
Muse's mockery of these poor mimics, come 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 to be described as I now
proceed to give it:

There is a scene in the play representing the modern parlor, in which
two unprecedented English 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 murder of Abraham Lincoln. Great as that was, with all its
manifold train circ