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.

Harold tood well beneath the drop, still whipering at the lip, but
taut, and short, and boyish.
Atzerott, in his grovelling attitude, while they tied him began to indulge
in his old vice of gabbing. He evidently wished to make his finale more
effective than his previous cowardly role, and perhaps was strengthening
his fortitude with a speech, as we sometimes do of dark nigbts with a
whistle.
"Gentlemen," he said, with a sort of choke and gasp, " take ware,"
He evidently meant "beware," or "take care, and confounded
them.
Again, when the white death-cap was dra'rn over his face, he continued
to cry out under it, once saying, "Good bye, shentlemens, who is before
me now;" and again, " May we meet in the other world." Finally he
drifted away with low, half-intelligible ebullitions, as "God help me," "oh!
oh!" and the like.
The rest said nothing, except Mrs. Surratt, who asked to be supported,
that she might not fall, but Harold protested against the knot with which
he was to be dislocated, it being as huge as one's double fist.
In faot all the mechanical preparations were clumsy and inartistic, and
the final scenes of the execution, therefore, revolting in the extreme. WVhen
the dcath-caps were all drawn over the faces of the prisoners, and they stood
in line in the awful suspense between absolute life and immediate death, a
man at the neck of each adjusting the cord, the knot beneath the ears of
each protruded five or six inches, and the cord was so thick that it could
not be made to press tightly against the flesh.
So they stood, while nearly a thousand faces from window, roof, wall,
yard and housetop, gazed, the scaffold behind them still densely packed
with the assistants, an(c the four executioners beneath, standing at their
swinging beams. The priests continued to. murmur prayers. The people
were dumb, as if each witness stood alone with none near by to talk to
him.
An instant this continued, while an officer on the plot before, motioned
back the assistants, and then with a forward thrust of his hand, signaled
'bh executioners.
The great beams were darted against the props simultaneously. The
two traps fell with a slain. The four bodies dropped lIke a single thing,
outside the yet crowded remnant of the gallows floor, and swayed and
turned, to and fto, here and there, forward and backward, and with many
a helpless spasm, while the spectators took a little rush forward, and the
ropes were taut as the struggling pulses of the dying.
rirs. Surratt's neck was broken immediately; she scarcely drew one
breath. Her short woman's figure, with the skirts looped closely about it,
merely dangled by the vibration of her swift descent, and with the knot
holding true under the ear, her head leaned sideways, and her pinioned
-arms seemed content with their confinement.
Payne died a horrible death; the knot slipped to the back of his reck,
and bent his head forwsard on his breast, st that he strangled as he drew
his deep chest almost to his chi, and the knees contracted till they almost
seemed to touch his abdomen. The veins in. hisgreat wrists were like
whip-cords, expanded to twice their natural dimensions, and the huge neck
grew almost black with the dark blood that rushed in a flood to the circling rope. A long while he swayed and twisted and struggled, till at last
nature ceased her rebellion and life went out unwillingly.
Harold also passed through some struggles. It is doubtful that his
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