the great achievements of Mr. Lincoln's time, the many proofs of a clearness of foresight, an unerring judgment dissipating mists and clarifying doubts, and a wisdom astonishing the wisest, which met perils and solved problems and adjusted complications which appalled and confounded the wisest and most patriotic of those around him. Those called to hold up his hands as counsellors found him calmer and clearer-sighted than they, and more than one in command of armies under him pronounced him the ablest strategist of the War. It was intuition, not learning or experience, that guided his pen in reshaping Mr. Seward's first instructions to Mr. Adams, our Minister to England, and saved the nation from an untenable attitude toward the rebel States, upon which hostile Europe was making haste to seize. It was political wisdom passing that of any other man which enabled him to hold in check the too ardent, and at the same time hold up the too timid and faint-hearted, while he worked out, without convulsion, the solution of the problem of emancipation. Reconstruction, though not accomplished in his lifetime, was certainly held, under his guiding hand, free from the disasters which came upon it when the reins fell from his grasp. The political sagacity of no other man was ever equal to that which enabled him to gather around him in earnest support of his administration, rivalries, opposing purposes, conflicting theories, and implacable enmities, which would have rent asunder any other administration. one like him could turn aside, so that they hurt him not, the shafts of malice and detraction, or like him could compose strifes and poultice heart-burnings till enthusiasm drove out sulkiness. Whether it was in the small things or in the great things with which he had to deal,

No

he was equally matchless. And all this was born in him. Neither education nor experience nor example had anything to do with the production of this great central, controlling force in the greatest of all the crises that ever came upon the nation. His development kept pace with the multiplying exigencies which confronted him, and he was never found wanting. He grew wiser and broader and stronger as difficulties thickened and perils multiplied, till the end found him the wonder in our history. His last public utterance, only three days before his death, when, taking the nation into his confidence as never before, he spoke of the controlling motive of the past, to what it had brought the nation thus far, and what was yet to be done, all put forth with a simplicity and power of speech no other man possessed, stands unchallenged in the light of thirty years of subsequent study and experience of what was gained and what was lost when power passed into other hands.

I love to think of him, however, as the man open to human and humane influences, pained by the distress and sorrow which filled the land, shedding tears over the terrible sacrifice of life which was the price paid for victories that filled others with exultation. No familiarity with the horrors inseparable from war ever so hardened the softest and tenderest heart that ever beat in the breast of man that it did not bleed in a hospital, that it did not rebel against the necessity which compelled him to deny the importunities of sorrowing fathers and broken-hearted mothers whose sons had fallen within the enemy's lines, or were languishing in prisons beyond his reach. The desolation and woe which followed the work forced upon him saddened every waking hour of his life. from the day that terrible work began.

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,

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