The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes BoothTownsend, George Alfred
History
The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth
Townsend, George Alfred
Assassins -- United States -- Biography; Booth, John Wilkes, 1838-1865; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Assassination
Yet, sometimes, across Mrs. Surratt's face a stealthiness creeps--a sort
of furtive, feline flashing of the eye, like that of one which means to
leap sideways. At these times her face seems to grow hard and colorless,
as if that tiger expression which Pradier caught upon the face of
Brinvilliers and fastened into a masque, had been repeated here. Not to
grow mawkish while we must be kind, let us not forget that this woman is
an old plotter. If she did not devise the assassination, she was privy
to it long. She was an agent of contraband mails--a bold, crafty,
assured rebel--perhaps a spy--and in the event of her condemnation, let
those who would plead for her spend half their pity upon that victim
whose heart was like a woman's, and whose hand was merciful as a
mother's.
Before the door sits an officer, uncovered, who does not seem to labor
under any particular fear, chiefly because the captives are ironed to
immovability, and he stares and smiles alternately, as if he were
somewhat amiable and extremely bored.
Next to the officer is a shabby-looking boy, whose seat is by the right
jamb of the jail door. Of all boys just old enough to feel their oats,
this boy is the most commonplace. His parents would be likely to have no
sanguine hopes of his reaching the presidency; for his head indicates
latent dementia, and a slice or two from it would recommend him, without
exanimation, to the school for the feeble-minded. Better dressed, and
washed, and shaved, he might make a tolerable adornment to a hotel door,
or even reach the dignity of a bar-keeper or an usher at a theatre. But
that this fellow should occupy a leaf in history and be confounded with
a tragedy entering into the literature of the world, reverses manifest
destiny, and leaves neither phrenology nor physiognomy a place to stand
upon.
Come up! Gall, Spurzheim, and Lavater, and remark his sallow face,
attenuated by base excesses! Do you know any forehead so broad which
means so little? the oyster could teach this man philosophy! His chin is
sharp, his eyes are blank blue, his short black hair curls over his
ears, and his beard is of a prickly black, with a moustache which does
not help his general contemptibleness. A dirty grayish shirt without a
linen collar, is seen between the lapels of the greasy and dusty cloth
coat, sloping at the shoulders; and under his worn brown trowsers, the
manacle of iron makes an ugly garter to his carpet clipper.
This is David Harold, who shared the wild night-ride of Booth, and
barely escaped that outlaw's death in the burning barn.
He stoops to the rail of the dock, now and then, to chat with his
attorney, and a sort of blank anxiety which he wears, as his head turns
here and there, shifts to a frolicking smile. But a woman of unusual
attractions enters the court, and Harold is much more interested in her
than in his acquittal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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