not so dramatic, as the assassination of the President. At 9:20 o'clock
a man, tall, athletic, and dressed in light coloured clothes, alighted
from a horse in front of Mr. Seward's residence in Madison place, where
the secretary was lying, very feeble from his recent injuries. The
house, a solid three-story brick building, was formerly the old
Washington Club-house. Leaving his horse standing, the stranger rang at
the door, and informed the servant who admitted him that he desired to
see Mr. Seward. The servant responded that Mr. Seward was very ill, and
that no visitors were admitted. "But I am a messenger from Dr. Verdi,
Mr. Seward's physician; I have a prescription which I must deliver to
him myself." The servant still demurring, the stranger, without further
parley, pushed him aside and ascended the stairs. Moving to the right,
he proceeded towards Mr. Seward's room, and was about to enter it, when
Mr. Frederick Seward appeared from an opposite doorway and demanded his
business. He responded in the same manner as to the servant below, but
being met with a refusal, suddenly closed the controversy by striking
Mr. Seward a severe and perhaps mortal blow across the forehead with the
butt of a pistol. As the first victim fell, Major Seward, another and
younger son of the secretary, emerged from his father's room. Without a
word the man drew a knife and struck the major several blows with it,
rushing into the chamber as he did so; then, after dealing the nurse a
horrible wound across the bowels, he sprang to the bed upon which the
secretary lay, stabbing him once in the face and neck. Mr. Seward arose
convulsively and fell from the bed to the floor. Turning and brandishing
his knife anew, the assassin fled from the room, cleared the prostrate
form of Frederick Seward in the hall, descended the stairs in three
leaps, and was out of the door and upon his horse in an instant. It is
stated by a person who saw him mount that, although he leaped upon his
horse with most unseemly haste, he trotted away around the corner of the
block with circumspect deliberation.