The Washington herald., 1915-04-14

by rearranginS the furniture, placing
portrait OF WASHINGTON in its front, and
draping the box with flags.
These preparations We're in progress
when John Wilkes Booth called at the
theater. rs he had done OH many days
in the preceding months, to get his mail.
He received long letter. and sat on
the theater steps to read it. smiling as
he read. Then he sauntered away to-
ward Pennsylvania avenue, apparently
as care-free, and certainly as jaunty as
usual.
In that visit to the theater Booth
learned that the victim for whom he had
waited long was that night to be given
into his hands; and he lost no time in
putting into train his matured plans for
his foul deed.
Preparations for Crime.
Booths preparation for his crime fitted
so well into his daily habits and ahunts,
and Were carried out with such cunning
assembling. that his familiars at the
theater saw no reason TO suspect him.
1t had been his custom to ride to the
theater on horseback. and keep his horse
in an alley behind the building. Here.
when forming his earlier plan OF kid
mapping Lincoln, which he discarded in
March. he kept a horse, in Il little stable
hired for the purpose. That horse had
been sold, but on April Il Booth hired
another, 4 little bay mare. at a livery
stable. In the afternoon he showed the
PAGES of this animal to a saloonkeeping
friend
The work in the theater of preparing
the Presidents box was not watched by
Booth. He knew the house so we'll that
he need not study ii now. When the
wOrkmen had gone. at supper time. it
seems most probable. the assassin
slipped through the darkened theater
to the Presidents box. No one saw him
there; but a hole was bored in the panel
of the box door, and a bar was fitted
behind the door opening from the bal
cony on the little corridor at the back
of the box. With one end of the bar
in hole dug in the plaster of the wall,
and the other pressed against the side
of n panel, the door could not be opened
from without.
These things done, and the bar taken
down and stood in dark recess behind
the door. Booth left the theater.
That evening at o'clock, in a room
in a second-rate hotel Booth met three
men. They were members of the band
he had trained in his kidnapping plan.
One was Lewis Powell, alias Payne. Him
Booth assigned to assassinate Secretary
OF State William II. Seward at his home
Another. George a. Atzeroldt. was told
off 10 kill Vice President Andrew John
son at his hotel. The third was David
+. Hcrold, who may have been ordered
to attack Secretary of War Stanton. but
whose chief duty was to meet Booth
after the assassination of Lincoln and
guide him through Eastern Maryland TO
the lower Potomac.
The nights work thus laid out. Booth
rode to Ford's Theater to wait the
coming of the President
The Shooting of Lincoln.
The President was late in reaching the
theater. As he entered the box. the
action Of the play ceased. the audience
rose and cheered and the orchestra
played Hail to the Chief"
Lincoln took his seat in a rocking chair
at the left Of the box, from the door,
Mrs. Lincoln sat next to him. and the
young couple on a sofa at her right.
All were soon absorbed in the play
The PRESIDENTS party was accompanied
by one guard from the White House, for
whom a chair had been placed in the
little corridor at the back of the box;
but the man wished to see the play, and
leaving his post took n seat among the
audience, at some distance from The
outer door OF the box.
Booth. who was not at the theater
when Lincoln arrived, left his horse. AT
the stage door between . and $50, and
passed through the house Several times
between $50 and 10 he passed in and
out of the front entrance, testing once
with the doorkecper. and again consent
ing TO an introduction to som. OF IN.
mans country friends.
At 1910 the assassin passed In for the
last time. Hts keen eyes noticed ON
his earlier visits the absenc. OF the
fI