On April 9 the President was coming up the Potomac in a steamer from City Point; the Comte de Chambrun was of the party and relates that, as they were nearing Washington, Mrs. Lincoln, who had been silently gazing toward the town, said:  “That city is filled with our enemies;” whereupon Mr. Lincoln “somewhat impatiently retorted:  ’Enemies! we must never speak of that!’” For he was resolutely cherishing the impossible idea that Northerners and Southerners were to be enemies no longer, but that a pacification of the spirit was coming throughout the warring land contemporaneously with the cessation of hostilities,—­a dream romantic and hopelessly incapable of realization, but humane and beautiful.  Since he did not live to endeavor to transform it into a fact, and thereby perhaps to have his efforts cause even seriously injurious results, it is open to us to forget the impracticability of the fancy and to revere the nature which in such an hour could give birth to such a purpose.

The fourteenth day of April was Friday,—­Good Friday.  Many religious persons afterward ventured to say that if the President had not been at the theatre upon that sacred day, the awful tragedy might never have occurred at all.  Others, however, not less religiously disposed, were impressed by the coincidence that the fatal shot was fired upon that day which the Christian world had agreed to adopt as the anniversary of the crucifixion of the Saviour of mankind.  General Grant and his wife were in Washington on that day and the President invited them to go with him to see the play at Ford’s theatre in the evening, but personal engagements called them northward.  In the afternoon the President drove out with his wife, and again the superstitious element comes in; for he appeared in such good spirits, as he chatted cheerfully of the past and the future, that she uneasily remarked to him:  “I have seen you thus only once before; it was just before our dear Willie died.”  Such a frame of mind, however, under the circumstances at that time must be regarded as entirely natural rather than as ominous.

About nine o’clock in the evening the President entered his box at the theatre; with him were his wife, Major Rathbone, and a lady; the box had been decorated with an American flag, of which the folds swept down to the stage.  Unfortunately it had also been tampered with, in preparation for the plans of the conspirators.  Between it and the corridor was a small vestibule; and a stout stick of wood had been so arranged that it could in an instant be made to fasten securely, on the inside, the door which opened from the corridor into this vestibule.  Also in the door which led from the vestibule into the box itself a hole had been cut, through which the situation of the different persons in the box could be clearly seen.  Soon after the party had entered, when the cheering had subsided and the play was going forward, just after ten o’clock, a man approached through the corridor, pushed his visiting