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Was modeled skillfully and set away
Achieved. But lesser artists—Circumstance,
The passions—tinker with it every day,
And oh, the ruin they arc like to make!
Exasperation scratches up the brow,
While Time keeps sidling forward, now to take
A little clay from either cheek, and now
To mar the clear formation of the throat.
The month, retouched by disenchantment, shapes
Wise characters whose drooping lines denote
The residue of ash when youth escapes.
The mask is sad. But under flesh and skin
Stretches, bone deep, a wide enduring grin.
EMMA L. R. WHIT:;
New Brighton, Staten Island
Surgeons Taft & Leale
Sirs:
In your April 4 number I notice an error . . .
"Birthdays. Dr. Charles Augustus Leale, 90 (first surgeon to reach Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre after he was shot by John Wilkes Booth); . . ."
My brother Surgeon Charles S. Taft was the first surgeon to reach Lincoln after Booth shot him. Col. Osborne Oldroyd in his book The Assassination of Lincoln, which is authentic, tells of Surgeon Taft being the first surgeon to reach Lincoln and he says Surgeon Taft had charge of the case until the arrival of the Lincoln's private physician and the Surgeon-General.
My brother told us, "When I saw Booth's face and heard the shot I knew what had happened.'' He climbed on to the stage and was helped into the box the same way Booth had come down. Col. Oldroyd says, "Surgeon Taft stood at the head of the dying president all that dreadful night controlling the flow of the blood from the wound with his finger."
The Surgeon-General ordered Surgeon Taft to report to the artist for the official picture of the Deathbed of Lincoln. That picture may be seen in the house on Tenth Street where Lincoln died, in the museum of Lincoln relics, formerly kept by Col. Oldroyd. In the picture my brother is shown standing at the head of the bed with his hands on Lincoln's head. I have seen some incorrect pictures of the Deathbed, but this is the authentic one. . . .
I remember a man told a reporter once that he was the first one by Lincoln. This Dr. Leale may have been one of those asked by my brother to assist in carrying Lincoln from the theatre across the street to the house where he later died. . . .
JULIA TAFT BAYNE
May I add that mother is 87 years old, still writes and publishes books and articles, still gives her delightful talks on "My Memory of Lincoln," and still keeps up to date by reading TIME, which she very much enjoys.
LILIAN WEST
Urbana, Ill.
Surgeon Taft was a second cousin of the late William Howard Taft. Surgeon Leale's claim of first-to-Lincoln rested largely on his own sworn statement on reporting the autopsy to the Surgeon-General. Dr. Leale also claimed to have put the half-dollars on the dead Lincoln's staring eyes, to have bound up the drooping jaw with a pocket handkerchief.—ED.
Boyer's Cellar
Sirs:
I should like to correct a statement made in the section on music in your issue of April 4. You mention a phonograph record of Mlle. Lucienne Boyer, and say that "Parisians go to the swank Monseigneur to hear her sing" or something of the sort.