was her imperfect vision on an occasion of excitement and anxiety, like the night of her arrest and the disturbance of her household by military officers, and when the person with whom she was confronted was transfigured by a disguise which varied from the one in which she had previously met him, with all the wide difference between a Baptist parson and an earth-soiled, uncouthly-dressed digger of gutters!  Anna E. Surratt, Emma Offutt, Anna Ward, Elize Holohan, Honora Fitzpatrick, and a servant, attest to all the visual incapacity of Mrs. Surratt, and the annoyance she experienced therefrom in passing friends without recognition in the daytime, and from inability to sew or read even on a dark day, as well as at night.  The priests of her church, and gentlemen who have been friendly and neighborhood acquaintances of Mrs. Surratt for many years, bear witness to her untarnished name, to her discreet and Christian character, to the absence of all imputation of disloyalty, to her character for patriotism.  Friends and servants attest to her voluntary and gratuitous beneficence to our soldiers stationed near her; and, “in charges for high treason, it is pertinent to inquire into the humanity of the prisoner toward those representing the government,” is the maxim of the law; and, in addition, we invite your attention to the singular fact that of the two officers who bore testimony in this matter, one asserts that the hall wherein Payne sat was illuminated with a full head of gas; the other, that the gaslight was purposely dimmed.  The uncertainty of the witness who gave the testimony relative to the coat of Payne may also be called to your notice.

Should not this valuable testimony of loyal and moral character shield a woman from the ready belief, on the part of judges who judge her worthiness in every way, that during the few moments Booth detained Mrs. Surratt from her carriage, already waiting, when he approached and entered the house, she became so converted to diabolical evil as to hail with ready assistance his terrible plot, which must have been framed (if it were complete in his intent at that hour, half-past two o’clock), since the hour of eleven that day?

If any part of Lloyd’s statements is true, and Mrs. Surratt did verily bear to his or Mrs. Offutt’s hands the field glass, enveloped in paper, by the evidence itself we may believe she knew not the nature of the contents of the package; and had she known, what evil could she or any other have attached to a commission of so common a nature?  No evidence of individual or personal intimacy with Booth has been adduced against Mrs. Surratt; no long and apparently confidential interviews; no indications of a private comprehension mutual between them; only the natural and not frequent custom on the part of Booth—­as any other associate of her son might and doubtless did do—­of inquiring through the mother, whom he would request to see, of the son, who, he would learn, was absent from home.  No one has