As additional despatches were received from the army, the joyful excitement in Washington increased.  Tuesday evening, April 11, the President’s mansion, the Executive Departments, and many of the business places and private residences, were illuminated, bonfires were kindled, and fireworks sent off, in celebration of the great event which stirred the hearts of the people.  A vast mass of citizens crowded about the White House, as Lincoln appeared at the historic East window and made his last speech to the American public.  It was a somewhat lengthy address, and had been prepared and written out for the occasion.  “We meet this evening, not in sorrow but in gladness of heart,” began the President.  “No part of the honor or praise is mine.  To General Grant, his skilful officers and brave men, all belongs.”  Mr. Brooks, who was in the White House during the delivery of this address, gives the following glimpses behind the scenes:  “As Lincoln spoke, the multitude was as silent as if the court-yard had been deserted.  Then, as his speech was written on loose sheets, and the candles placed for him were too low, he took a light in his hand and went on with his reading.  Soon coming to the end of a page, he found some difficulty in handling the manuscript and holding the candlestick.  A friend who stood behind the drapery of the window reached out and took the candle, and held it until the end of the speech, and the President let the loose pages fall on the floor, one by one, as fast as he was through with them.  Presently Tad, having refreshed himself at the dinner-table, came back in search of amusement.  He gathered up the scattered sheets of the President’s speech, and then amused himself by chasing the leaves as they fluttered from the speaker’s hand.  Growing impatient at his father’s delay to drop another page, Tad whispered, ‘Come, give me another!’ The President made a queer motion with his foot toward the boy, but otherwise showed no sign that he had other thoughts than those which he was dropping to the listeners beneath.  Without was a vast sea of upturned faces, each eye fixed on the form of the President.  Around the tall white pillars of the portico flowed an undulating surface of human beings, stirred by emotion and lighted with the fantastic colors of fireworks.  At the window, his face irradiated with patriotic joy, was the much-beloved Lincoln, reading the speech that was to be his last to the people.  Behind him crept back and forth, on his hands and knees, the boy of the White House, gathering up his father’s carefully written pages, and occasionally lifting up his eager face waiting for more.  It was before and behind the scenes.  Sometimes I wonder, when I recall that night, how much of a father’s love and thought of his boy might have been mingled in Lincoln’s last speech to the eager multitude.”