sallied forth between the acts and bought up all the bouquets in the quarter.  The final act of “Evadne” was played almost knee-deep in flowers, and that night Mary Anderson was compelled to hire a wagon to carry home to her hotel the floral offerings of her martial admirers.  General and Mrs. Tom Thumb occupied the stage box on one of the early nights of the engagement, and the fame of the beautiful young star soon reached the fashionable quarter of New Orleans, and Upper Tendom flocked to the despised St. Charles.  On the following Saturday night there was a house packed from floor to ceiling, the takings, meanwhile, having risen from 48 to 500 dollars.  An offer of an engagement at the Varietes, the Lyceum of New Orleans, quickly followed, and the daring feat of appearing as Meg Merrilies was attempted on its boards.  The press predicted failure, and warned the young aspirant against essaying a part almost identified with Cushman, then but lately deceased, who had been a great favorite with the New Orleans public, and one of whose best impersonations it was.  The actors too, with whom Mary Anderson rehearsed, looked forward to anything but a success.  Nothing daunted, however, and confident in her own powers, she spent two hours in perfecting a make-up so successful, that even her mother failed to recognize her in the strange, weird disguise; and then, darkening her dressing-room, set herself resolutely to get into the heart of her part.  Mary Anderson’s Meg Merrilies was an immense success; Cushman herself never received greater applause, and the scene was quite an ovation.  Hearing, on the fall of the curtain, that General Beauregard, one of the heroes of the civil war, intended to make a presentation, she threw off her disguise, and smoothing her hair rushed back to the stage, to receive the Badge of the Washington Artillery, a belt enameled in blue, with crossed cannons in gold with diamond vents, and suspended from the belt a tiger’s head in gold, with diamond eyes and ruby tongue.  The corps had been known through the war as the “Tiger Heads,” and were famed for their deeds of daring and bravery.  The belt bore the inscription, “To Mary Anderson, from her friends of the Battalion.”  She returned thanks in a little speech, which was received with much enthusiasm, and retired almost overcome with pleasure and pride.  The youthful actress, who had then not completed her seventeenth year, took by storm the hearts of the impulsive and chivalrous Southerners.  On the morning of her departure, she found to her astonishment that the railway company had placed a fine “Pullman” and special engine at her disposal all the way to Louisville.  Generals Beauregard and Hood, with many distinguished Southerners, were on the platform to bid her farewell, and she returned home with purse and reputation, both marvelously grown.

After a brief period spent in diligent study, Mary Anderson fulfilled a second engagement in New Orleans, which proved a great financial success.  The criticisms of this period all admit her histrionic power, though some describe her efforts as at times raw and crude, faults hardly to be wondered at in a young girl mainly self-taught, and with barely a year’s experience of the business of the stage.