The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-11-28


was simply amazing for an amateur
company, and he says he has seen many
worst first nights by professional peo-
pie.
One of the most pathetic and interest
ing stories told of the late Edwin Booth
is related in the Chicago News by Amy
Leslie, who obtained it from Garry Da
wilson, an attache of Booths theatre.
The story goes:
Mr. Booth was so stormily absorbed
in heroic sensitiVeness upon the sub
ject of his picturesque brother Wilkes
assassination of, Abraham Lincoln that
Wilkes beloved name was never men
toned to his wounded relative. His
pictures were all taken away from their
favorite corners and walls, trinketS and
gifts from him We're hastily hidden and
a constant brooding over the calamity
settled upon Booth a ceaseless melan-
choly, most pitiful in its loneliness and
passionate abandon. One night Mr..
Booth asked Garry to see that the fur
naces of the theatre were fired up anew
along toward midnight, and that Garry
alone should attend to the huge cal
drons of fire, Diminishing the guard, the
stokers and the firemen from their ac-
customed night watch. At midnight
Mr.. Booth ordered Garry to help carry
waite room to the blazing cave of ovens,
Booth lending a tender hand to the
lifting of the great load. Garry asked
no questions, but silently obeyed or
ders, and when the glare from the fur
mace struck the trunk upon the end
grew the worn letters, ~. W. B"
White as a statue. the haunted and
adoring brother unlocked the shot
mans iron-bound chest and told Garry
to stand apart and not to touch an ar
ticle within. Garry stood in the black
ferer with firm white hands and tragic
eyes take each g"rment of John Wilkes
piece by piece, and reverently put it
upon the flaming Goals and watch it
burn to a flame of scarlet-white II
must have been a sight bursting with
symbol and mystery, triste as the
Gathsemane night and awesome in its
tragedy. The perfect face of Edwin
Booth white with true suffering and
the outpour of a broken heart, his
racked soul torn in silence and the
great mood of sacrifice upon him,
standing before that midnight volcano
fiinging into the furnace everything
belonging to the misguided regicide,
who lay in an unmarked grave. When
| Edwin came to the little dagger Mac
ready had given to Junius Brutus
| BOOCn, VINO mao III given II
| Wilkes, Mr.. Booth stood holding it and
turning it over in his beautiful hand
| big sobs rising between the roars of the
mighty fires and tears raining over his
marble countenance. First he put the
! little jeWeled toy in a pocket next his
heart, but after the last remnant OF
clothing, the last trinket and locket
last picture, ribbon and buckle OF
! John Wilkes Booths possessions was
in cinders, Mr.. Booth walked close uI
to the fire and threw the dagger into
the core of it, then took an ak and split
the trunk into kindling and burned
every splinter of the chest in silence
in reverence, with the unconscious dra.
matte splendor of martyrdom.
@ @ @
The Lyceum has made a cut in it:
prices, and will hereafter be known as
10, 20 and 3O-cent house. For the com
ing week Manager Maltese announces
a vaudeville show, made up of people
from the Orpheum in San Francisco.
@ 6 8
Anecdotes and "reminiscences of tn
late Mrs. John Drew are filing tn
eastern papers. An amusing one is toic
in the st. Louis Republic:
During the old stock company days
row about to be revived, Matt Snyde
, was a prominent performer. He wa
we'll liked and popular His line wa
: that Of walking gentleman" On