“And still a moment’s strange, incredulous suspense--and then the deluge!--then that mixture of horror, noises, uncertainty--the sound, somewhere back, of a horse’s hoofs clattering with speed--the people burst through chairs and railings, and break them up--that noise adds to the queerness of the scene--there is inextricable confusion and terror--women faint--quite feeble persons fall, and are trampled on--many cries of agony are heard--the broad stage suddenly fills to suffocation with a dense and motley crowd, like some horrible carnival--the audience rush generally upon it--at least the strong men do--the actors and actresses are there in their play costumes and painted faces, with mortal fright showing through the rouge--some trembling, some in tears--the screams and calls, confused talk--redoubled, trebled--two or three manage to pass up water from the stage to the President’s box, others try to clamber up, etc., etc. “In the midst of all this the soldiers of the President’s Guard, with others, suddenly drawn to the scene, burst in--some two hundred altogether--they storm the house, through all the tiers, especially the upper ones--inflamed with fury, literally charging the audience with fixed bayonets, muskets and pistols, shouting, ‘Clear out! clear out!’ “Such a wild scene, or a suggestion of it, rather, inside the playhouse that night! “Outside, too, in the atmosphere of shock and craze, crowds of people filled with frenzy, ready to seize any outlet for it, came near committing murder several times on innocent individuals. “One such case was particularly exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance, got started against one man, either for words he uttered, or perhaps without any cause at all, and were proceeding to hang him at once to a neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroic policemen, who placed him in their midst and fought their way slowly and amid great peril toward the station-house. “It was a fitting episode of the whole affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro, the night, the yells, the pale faces, many frightened people trying in vain to extricate themselves, the attacked man, not yet freed from the jaws of death, looking like a corpse; the silent, resolute half-dozen policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and steady through all those eddying swarms, made, indeed, a fitting side scene to the grand tragedy of the murder. They gained the station-house with the protected man, whom they placed in security for the night, and discharged in the morning. “And in the midst of that night pandemonium of senseless hate, infuriated soldiers, the audience and the crowd--the stage, and all its actors and actresses, its paint pots, spangles, gas-light--the life-blood from those veins, the best and sweetest of the land, drips slowly down, and death’s ooze already begins its little bubbles on the lips.