John Wilkes Booth’s sister recalled that when he was a young man, he met with a fortune teller who told him he was destined to lead a short and troubled life:
Ah, you’ve a bad hand; the lines all cris-cras. It’s full length enough of sorrow. Full of trouble. Trouble in plenty, everywhere I look. They’ll be nothing to you. You’ll die young, and leave many to mourn you, many to love you too, but you’ll be rich, generous, and free with your money. You’re born under an unlucky star. You’ve got in your hand a thundering crowd of enemies—not one friend—you’ll make a bad end, and have plenty to love you afterwards. You’ll have a fast life—short, but grand one. Now young sir, I’ve never seen a worse hand, and I wish I hadn’t seen it, but every word I’ve told is true by the signs. You’d best turn a missionary or a priest and try to escape it.
John Wilkes Booth. Photograph by Alexander Gardner (1865). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.19233
By fate or coincidence, on April 26th, 1865 John Wilkes Booth met his death at the age of twenty-six. After twelve days on the run with co-conspirator David Herold, Booth found himself surrounded by the 16th New York Cavalry and detectives Baker and Conger at Richard Garrett’s Far
