e, but caught
his spur in the folds of the flag, so that he did not alight fairly upon
his feet; but he instantly recovered himself, and with a visible limp in
his gait hastened across the stage; as he went, he turned towards the
audience, brandished the bloody dagger with which he had just struck
Rathbone, and cried "_Sic semper tyrannis!_" Some one recognized John
Wilkes Booth, an actor of melodramatic characters. The door at the back
of the theatre was held open for him by Edward Spangler, an employee,
and in the alley hard by a boy, also employed about the theatre, was
holding the assassin's horse, saddled and bridled. Booth kicked the boy
aside, with a curse, climbed into the saddle with difficulty,--for the
small bone of his leg between the knee and ankle had been broken in his
fall upon the stage,--and rode rapidly away into the night. Amid the
confusion, no efficient pursuit was made.

The President had been shot at the back of the head, on the left side;
the bullet passed through the brain, and stopped just short of the left
eye. Unconsciousness of course came instantaneously. He was carried to a
room in a house opposite the theatre, and there he continued to breathe
until twenty-two minutes after seven o'clock in the morning, at which
moment he died.

* * * * *

The man Booth, who had done this deed of blood and madness, was an
unworthy member of the family of distinguished actors of that name. He
was young, handsome, given to hard drinking, of inordinate vanity, and
of small capacity in his profession; altogether, he was a disreputable
fellow, though fitted to seem a hero in the eyes of the ignorant and
dissipated classes. Betwixt the fumes of the brandy which he so freely
drank and the folly of the melodramatic parts which he was wont to act,
his brain became saturated with a passion for notoriety, which grew into
the very mania of egotism. His crime was as stupid as it was barbarous;
and even from his own point of view his achievement was actually worse
than a failure. As an act of revenge against a man whom he hated, he
accomplished nothing, for he did not inflict upon Mr. Lincoln so much as
one minute of mental distress or physical suffering. To the South he
brought no good, and at least ran the risk of inflicting upon it much
evil, since he aroused a vindictive temper among persons who had the
power to carry vindictiveness into effect; and he slew the only sincere
and po