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[365] surprised not to find in his mien or step the signs of that physical exhaustion and that mental depression which all persons had represented him as having fallen into. General Miles, however, tells me that this was merely a piece of acting for that special occasion, and that he has since either exhibited signs of the greatest weakness, or of a sort of intense and imbecile fury. When and how he is to be tried is, so far as I know, not yet determined. He has been indicted by the grand jury of this city for participation in the raid which Breckenridge and Early made here last summer, it being necessary to have some overt act with which to sustain the charge of treason. Possibly, however, owing to the great difficulty of being certain about a jury, it may be determined to try him by a military court, in which case the trial will take place at Fortress Monroe. General Grant is quietly established here in the discharge of his official duties as commander-in-chief. He has the same office which General Halleck occupied, and Rawlins and Bowers keep their desks in the room on the other side of the hall. I think that they find it rather dull work and pretty hard. The mass of papers that is sent there is no joke. Mr. Seward is recovering,1 and will no doubt entirely regain his strength. His fractured jaw must be nearly united by this time. For the last month he has worn one cap on the top of his head, and another under his chin, the two being united by bands of steel, and connected with a gutta-percha apparatus fitting to his jaws inside his mouth, and all rendering him, in connection with the wounds about his face and neck, one of the most horrible spectacles that the human eye ever beheld. He will, however, soon be able to lay aside this apparatus. His son, it is probable, will never recover. So far every active exertion has been soon followed by a hemorrhage from the broken artery in the top of the brain, and the number of fractures of the skull is so great that, however he may seem to regain his strength, his life must always be exceedingly faint and precarious. ...
2 From the injuries inflicted upon him by the assassin who attempted to kill him at the time the President was murdered.
Harper and Brothers, New York and London, 1907.
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