This is the Abraham Lincoln I saw most frequently, and who comes back most vividly to my mind as the anniversary of the day approaches when his life and work came to such a tragic end.

PITTSFIELD, MASS.

THE STORY OF THE ASSASSINATION.

TOLD BY ONE ON THE STAGE-HOW WILKES BOOTH ESCAPED-THE CHAMBER OF DEATH.

BY W. J. FERGUSON,

ONE OF THE PLAYERS AT FORD'S THEATRE.

ONLY four actors are now alive who performed in the play of "Our American Cousin," which President Lincoln was witnessing on the night when he was so cruelly assassinated. These actors are Harry Hawke, E. A. Emerson, John Matthews and myself. The play referred to is a comedy-drama, and was written by the late Dion Boucicault. The leading male character, Lord Dundreary, is an English dude, whose peculiarities are a drawling accent and great intellectual vacuity. This character, on the occasion referred to, was played by Mr. Emerson, who afterward retired from the stage, and who for years has been a cotton planter near Richmond, Va. He has always refused to say anything on the subject of the assassination. Just before this presentation of the play it may be interesting to note that it was presented in other cities, and the character of Dundreary was successfully portrayed by Commissioner W. S. Andrews, of New York, who was at one time a member of Edwin Booth's company. The second leading character, Asa Trenchard, a straightforward, honest Yan

kee, was played by Harry Hawke, who is still in the profession, and is located somewhere in the West. This character has been made famous by Mr. Joseph Jefferson, who has played it many times. Mr. Matthews, who played a subordinate character, is in New York, no longer playing, but connected in an official capacity with the benevolent organization known as "The Actors' Fund of America."

I was a very young man, almost a boy, at the time of this national tragedy about which I have often refused to speak. I will, however, break silence on this occasion for a great weekly journal like the New York Independ ent, which proposes, as I am informed, to give a symposium of reminiscences of the lamented Abraham Lincoln. Being quite young at the time of the assassination, the facts, as they appeared to me, were indelibly impressed upon my memory, never to be effaced; for I believe it is a well-recognized principle of memories that, as age advances, we remember best the remarkable occurrences that happened in our youth.

It was my first season on the stage. I was what was termed the call-boy. The call-boy is a messenger for the stage manager, and is often assigned to play some simple part. One part of his duty is to call the hours of the acts. A half-hour before the raising of the curtain he goes to the orchestra room and says "Half-hour," meaning that in half an hour the curtain will be raised. Before each act of the play he goes to each dressing room, raps at the door and says "Half-hour," or "Fifteen minutes," as the case may be, meaning there is that much time before the raising of the curtain. This position of callboy, by the way, has since then been done away with.

A young man who was playing a small part in the

piece was ill on the day of the assassination, and Miss Laura Keene, who was the star in the piece, asked me to take his part. When she came to the theatre at night, as I had a scene with her, she rehearsed me in it. In that way I happened to be on the side of the stage behind the scenes with her. To put it in theatrical parlance, she and I were standing at the right first entrance, at the prompter's box, directly opposite the box in which the President sat.

The performance was to be for the benefit of Miss Laura Keene; and the President, together with General Grant and other prominent men, had been invited, and were expected to be present. The private box adjoined the dress circle and had two doors, as it was sometimes, by a partition, converted into two boxes. These doors opened into a dark passage, closed by a door at the end of the dress circle. During the day, or previously, it is said that the assassin or some accomplice had bored gimlet holes in the box doors, enlarged by a penknife on the inside sufficiently to survey the position of the parties within at the moment of action. The hasps of the locks, which were on the inside of the box doors, had been weakened by partly withdrawing the screws, so that a man could easily press them open if locked. Mr. Lincoln's chair was in the front corner of the box, furthest from the stage; that of Mrs. Lincoln was more remote from the front, and near the column in the centre. In the box with the President and Mrs. Lincoln were Major Henry R. Rathbone and Miss Clara H. Harris, daughter of Senator Harris.

It was during the second scene of the third act that the shot was fired. 66 'May Meredith" was on the stage doing a quiet piece of monologue, which is always listened.

to by the audience in silence. Suddenly the sharp report of a pistol rang through the house. At the moment the pistol shot did not attract my attention because the property man" (the employé having charge of pistols, guns, etc., used in plays) was in the habit of discharging old firearms in the alley back of the theatre (the theatre being on a level with the street), in order to reload them. But not more than a second or two had elapsed after the firing of the shot before a man (Booth) jumped from the private box on to the stage. The crash of his fall quickly caused me to turn. Meanwhile to record my mental impression as I had had charge of placing books, manuscripts and papers on a desk that was to be used in the following scene, and which was just back of the scene on the stage, the thought occurred to me that the desk had, in some way, been overturned and the papers all displaced. "More work for me," I murmured to myself.

But as I looked on the stage, I saw Booth kneeling on one knee, the position in which he had fallen. The spur on his riding-boots had caught in the flag with which the box was draped and thrown him in that position when he alighted. The boards used on a theatrical stage are quite narrow, about two and a half inches wide. We afterward discovered that there was a semicircle cut by his spur just below the President's private box from whence he had jumped.

Booth (for I recognized him instantly) rose at once and quickly ran across the stage as if nothing had happened. Inside of thirty seconds he ran across, past the prompt box and then out of the stage door, which was on a level with the stage and opened on an alley.

For a moment the audience seemed to be spellbound. There was a deathly silence. You could have heard a