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.

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tiod with a ribbon, and dark pantaloons, but no shoes& Hi collar, cat
very low, showed the tremendous muscularity of his neck, and the
breadth of his breast was more conspicuous by the manner in which the
pinioned arms thrust it forward. Hlis height, his vigor, his glare made
him the strong central figure of this interelementary tableaux. He said
no word; his eyes were red as with the penitential weeping of a courageous
man, and the smooth hardness of his skin seemed like a polished muscle.
He did not look abroad inquisitively, nor within intuitively. He had no
accusation, no despair, no dreaminess. He was only looking at death as
for one long expected, and not a tremor nor a shock stirred his long stately limbs; withal, his blue eye was milder than when I saw him last, as;t
some bitterness, or stolidness, or obstinate pride had been exorcised, perhaps by the candor of confession. Now and then he looked halfpityingly
at the woman, and only once moved his lips, as if in supplication. Few
who looked at him, forgetful of his crine, did not respect him. He seemed to feel that no man was more than his peer, and one of his last com.
mands was a word of regret to Mr. Seward.
I have a doubt that this man is entirely a member of our nervous race
I believe that a fiber of the aboriginal runs through his tough sinews. At
times he looked entirely an Indian. His hair is tufted, and will not lie
smoothly. His check-bones'are large and high set. There is a tint in
his complexion. Perhaps the Seminole blood of his swampy state left a
trace of its combative nature there.
Payne was a preachler's son., and iiot the worst graduate of his class. His
real name is Lewis Thornton Powell.
Ile died without taking the hand of anty living friend.
Even the' squalid Atzerott was not so poor. I felt a pity for his physical
rather than his vital or spiritual peril'. It seemed a profanation to break
the iron column of his neck, and give to the worm his belted ches
But I remember th!iat he would have slain a sick old man.
The third condemned, although whimnpering, had far mor'e grit than I
anticipated; he- was inquisitive aird flippant-faced, and looked at the noose
flaunting before him, and the people gathered below, and the haggard face
of Atzerott, as if entirely conscious and incapable of abstraction.
~Iarold would have enjoyed this execution vastly as a spectator. He
was, I think, capable of a greater decgree of dcpravity than- any of his
complices. Atzerott might have made a sneak thief, Booth a forger, but
Harold was not far fromn a professional pickpocket. Hle was keen-eyed,
insolent, idle, and, by a small experience in Ihouston street, would have
been qualified for a -first-class "kniuck." lie had not, like the rest, any
political suggestion for the murder of the heads of the nation; and upon
the gallows, in his dirty felt hat, soiled cloth coat, light pantaloons and
stockings, he seemed unworthy of his-manacles.
A very fussy Dutchmana tied him up and fanned him, and he wept forgetfully, but did not make a halt or absurd spectacle.
Atzerott was my ideal of a man to be hung-a dilution of Wallack's
rendering of the last hours of Fagan, the Jew; a sort of sick man, quite
garrulous and smitten, with his,head thrown forward, muttering to the air,
and a pallidness transparent through his dirt as he jabbered prayers and
pleas confusedly, and looked in.- a complaining sort of way at the noose, as
f not quite certain that it might not have designs upon him.
Hle wore a greyish coat, black vest, light pantaloons and slippers, and a
white affair on his head, perhaps a handkerchief.
His spiritual adviser stood behind him, evidently disgusted with him.