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[242] These lines recall to me the scene of Mary Booth's funeral, which took place in wintry weather, the service being held at the chapel in Mount Auburn. Hers was a most pathetic figure as she lay, serene and lovely, surrounded with flowers. As Edwin Booth followed the casket, his eyes heavy with grief, I could not but remember how often I had seen him enact the part of Hamlet at the stage burial of Ophelia. Beside or behind him walked a young man of remarkable beauty, to be sadly known at a later date as Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Lincoln and the victim of his own crime. Henry Ward Beecher, meeting Mary Booth one day at dinner at my house, was so much impressed with her peculiar charm that, on the occasion of her death, he wrote a very sympathetic letter to Mr. Booth, and became thenceforth one of his most esteemed friends.

The years between 1850 and 1857, eventful as they were, appear to me almost a period of play when compared with the time of trial which was to follow. It might have been likened to the tuning of instruments before some great musical solemnity. The theme was already suggested, but of its wild and terrible development who could have had any foreknowledge? Parker, indeed, writing to Dr. Howe from Italy, said,

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