Edwin Booth, the tragedian, brother of the regicide Wilkes, was at a
friend's house. By the purest chance, dallying over the knickknacks, he
picked up a plaster-cast of a hand. It was something more than a
paper-weight, he was intuitively prompted, for he said, handling it
reverently as Yorick's relict:
"By the way, whose is this?"
Before the cue could be given to hush or utter a subterfuge, some one
blurted out:
"Abraham Lincoln's! Don't you know?"
"The murder was out!" and the distinguished guest, who suffered a long
term for a crime wholly out of his ken, was silent for the
evening.--(W. D. Howells.)
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