The life, crime, and capture of John Wilkes Booth,: with a full sketch of the conspiracy of which he was the leader, and the pursuit, trial and execution of his accomplices./ By George Alfred Townsend.

el
wll not do to say definitely in this notice how sevral oo nionl writers
visited the Whit House, heard the President's views and assnted to them
and afterward abused him. But these attained no remembrance nor tart
reproach'rom that least retaliatory of men. He harbored no malice, and
is,aid to have often placed himself on the stand-point of Davis and Lee,
and accounted for their defection while he could not excuse it.
He was a good reader, and took all the leading NEW-YORK dailies every
day. His secretaries perused them and selected all the items which *ould
interest the President; these were read to him and considered. He bought
few new books, but seemed ever alive to works of comic value; the vein
of humor in him was not boisterous in its manifestations, but touched the
geniality of his nature, and he reproduced all that he absorbed, to elucidate
some new issue, or turn away argument by a laugh.
As a jester, Mr. Lincoln's tendency was caricatured by the prints, but
not exaggerated. He probably told as many stories as are attributed to
him. Nor did he, as is averred, indulg,e in these jests on solemn occasions.
No man felt with such personal intensity the extent of the casualities of
his time, and he often gravely reasoned whether he could be in any way
responsible for the bloodshed and devastation over which it was his duty
to preside.
an acquaintance of mine-a private-once went to him to plead for a
man's life. He hLd never seen the man for whom he pleaded, and had no
acquaintance with the man's family. MIr. Lincoln was touched by his dig
interestedness, and said to him
"If I were anything but the-President, I would be constantly working
as you have done."
Whenever a doubt of one's guilt lay on his mind, the man was spared
by his direct interference.
There was an entire absence in the President's character of the heroic element. lie would do a great deed in deshabille as pr6niptly as in full dress
He never aimed to be brilliant, unconsciously understanding that a great
man's brilliancy is to be measured by the "wholeness" and synthetic cast
of his creer rather than by any fitful ebullitions. For that-reason welook
in vain through his messages for "points." His point was not to turn a sentence or an epigram, but to win an effect, regradless of the route to it.
He was commonplace in his talk, and Chesterfield would have had no
patience with him; his dignity of character lay in his uprightness rather
than in his formal manner. Members of his government often reviewed
him plainly in his presence. Yet he divined the true course, while they
only argued it out.
Ilis good feeling was not only personal, but national. He had no pre
judice against any race or potentate. And his democracy was of a practical, rather than of a demonstrative, nature. Ile was not Marat, but Moreau-not Paine and Jefferson; but Franklin.
His domestic life was like a parlor of night-time, lit by the equal grate
of his genral and uniform kindness.. Young Thaddy played with him
upon the carpet; Robert came home from the war and talked to his
father as to a school-mate, he was to Mfrs. Lincoln as chivwlroits on the
last day of his life as when he courted her. I have somewhere seen a
picture of IHenry IV. of Fran6e, riding his babies on his back: that was
the President.'
8o dwelt the citizen who is gone-. q r,.del in character if not in cere
mony, for good men to come who w)., his place in the same White
House, and find their generation.e. g them to the man thought
12U Marto.