the electric connection was made between the stage, the box, and the people.
After this, the play ran its smooth course, and the audience settled into its accustomed humour of sympathetic attention.
In spite of the novelty of this her first view of a theatre, the President fascinated Margaret. She watched the changing lights and shadows of his sensitive face with untiring interest, and the wonder of his life grew upon her imagination. This man who was the idol of the North and yet to her so purely Southern, who had come out of the West and yet was greater than the West or the North, and yet always supremely human—this man who sprang to his feet from the chair of State and bowed to a sorrowing woman with the deference of a knight, every man's friend, good-natured, sensible, masterful and clear in intellect, strong, yet modest, kind and gentle—yes, he was more interesting than all the drama and romance of the stage!
He held her imagination in a spell. Elsie, divining her abstraction, looked toward the President's box and saw approaching it along the balcony aisle the figure of John Wilkes Booth.
"Look," she cried, touching Margaret's arm. "There's John Wilkes Booth, the actor! Isn't he handsome? They say he's in love with my chum, a senator's daughter whose father hates Mr. Lincoln with perfect fury."
"He is handsome," Margaret answered. "But I'd be afraid of him, with that raven hair and eyes shining like something wild."
