pin drop. I instinctively imagined what had occurred. I looked up at the President's box, and saw him with his head leaning on his breast. He always sat with his back toward the audience. He was a very plain, unostentatious man, never wanted his coming to the theatre to be announced, and never cared for any demonstration of applause when he came in.

According to my recollection it is not true, as some of the newspapers reported, that Booth, as he jumped on the stage, cried out: "Sic semper tyrannis!" He jumped up from his knee and ran rapidly across the stage in my direction. I retreated two steps to give him plenty of room to pass me. He ran out into the alley where his horse was standing. It was shown afterward that he had taken a stable in the rear of the theatre, having hired a fine bay mare from a man named James Pumphrey. The horse was saddled and ready to mount, as he had ordered the bridle not to be taken off. All this was done so quickly that those in the theatre could hear the horse's hoofs rattling over the cobblestones down the alleyway tramp, tramp, tramp, until the sound of their rattling hoofs quickly died away in the distance. It seemed as if for a minute or more there was a dead silence in the audience. There was no crying out. Suddenly a movement was made; the actors behind the scenes crowded on the stage, persons in the front of the house crowded the orchestra and tried to reach the stage. Then some one said: "Booth!" and the cry was taken up, louder, and still louder: "Booth!" "Booth!" "BOOTH!"

After the excitement was over, some blood was found on the dress of Miss Laura Keene, and some of the sensational newspapers took pains to chronicle that the blood of the martyred President was on the dress of an

actress. That is not the fact. The truth is, the President did not bleed at all, at least while he was in the theatre, from which he was quickly removed. The wound was on the left side of the head behind, on a line with and three inches from the left ear. It is true that blood was found on Miss Keene's dress, but it came from Major Rathbone. It seems that as Booth ran across the box the Major attempted to seize him. But Booth wrested himself from the Major's grasp and made a violent thrust at him with a large knife which he carried in his hand. The Major parried the blow by an up-stroke, and received a wound several inches deep in his left arm between the elbow and the shoulder. He afterward said that the orifice of the wound was about an inch and a half in length, and extended upward toward the shoulder several inches. The wound bled very profusely, so much so that after he had assisted in carrying the President to the house across the street from the theatre where he died, the Major fainted away in the hall and had to be taken in a carriage to his residence. It was the blood from Major Rathbone's wound that, in the midst of the excitement that followed, when actors and audience crowded the stage, got on Miss Keene's dress.

I am sorry to say that after this great tragedy, Miss Keene, in her travels throughout the country, would exhibit this dress and claim that it was stained with the blood of the President. To say nothing about the want of decency or good taste of such a proceeding, it was, as I have shown, contrary to the fact. Harry Hawke, in his statement of the occurrence, says that when Booth gained the stage he slipped, but got up on his feet in a moment and brandished a large knife. He looked toward Mr. Hawke, who recognized him as John Wilkes Booth.

As he ran toward Mr. Hawke, the actor says he thought he had designs upon him, and so he ran off the stage and up a flight of stairs. I was in the box directly after the assassination, and saw that the President did not bleed. He was quickly carried downstairs and across the street to the house I have mentioned, where he was placed in a bedroom in an extension on the first or parlor floor of the house. It was a small room, ornamented with prints on the wall, the familiar one of Landseer's, a white horse, hanging directly over the bed. The wound in the President's head did not begin to bleed until some time toward morning. So the blood of the martyred President did not "bedabble the robes of an actress."

I had seen Booth on the afternoon of the fatal evening. At about three o'clock he passed by in front of the theatre. I passed the time of day, and he remarked that he was not feeling very well; he said, he had pleurisy. He went down the street to cross and then walked up toward the White House. For three months before he had not been seen about the theatre. Among the profession he was supposed to be engaged in oil speculations. He had not been acting that season, and was very much interested in the oil excitement in Pennsylvania.

The house where the President was taken, across the street from the theatre, was occupied by a family named Peterson. The President died in this house about halfpast seven the following morning. The son of Mr. Peterson and I were chums. When the President was carried in the house I went to the basement, where I was admitted, and went upstairs to the room where the President had been taken. I saw him lying on the bed. And it is a singular fact that perhaps has never been published, but I had seen John Wilkes Booth lying on that same

bed, a little over three months before, smoking a pipe. The house was a sort of rendezvous for actors, and members of theatrical companies often rented furnished rooms there.

After this sad event the theatre was closed for an indefinite period, and it was never opened again as a theatre. It is a singular fact, having no significance except among those who were superstitiously inclined, but the building fell to the ground on the day that Edwin Booth died. The truth is that the theatre was never properly constructed, and its fall can easily be accounted for from natural causes.

NEW YORK CITY.

AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM LINCOLN'S

LAW PARTNER.

LINCOLN ON EDUCATION - HIS VIEW OF WOMAN'S RIGHTS-AN EARLY REFORMER.

BY W. H. HERNDON, ESQ.

[The venerable W. H. Herndon, who for twenty-five years was Abraham Lincoln's law partner, and knew him better than perhaps any man now living, wrote the following a letter to Mr. John C. Henderson, of this city, giving facts which are an interesting and valuable contribution to the history of one of America's most celebrated statesmen.]

You request me to state to you what were the feelings, sentiments and ideas of Mr. Lincoln touching the great subject of public — universal — education of the people, especially in America. I became acquainted with Mr. Lincoln in 1834, while he lived in New Salem, in Sangamon County, in this State (Illinois), and knew him well from 1834 to the day of his death; and I ought to know his feelings, sentiments and ideas on this subject. I know what he has really said on the question of education, and I know what he has written on it; he has said to me, and to others in my presence and hearing, that "universal education should go along with and accompany the universal ballot in America; that the very best, firmest and most enduring basis of our Republic was the education, the thorough and the universal education of