Manager Ford had taken Mary Anderson through the South with great profit to himself.  In this she had had no direct pecuniary interest beyond her modest salary.  She had, of course, greatly enriched her reputation if not her purse.  She had become at home in her parts, and even added to her repertoire, the manager’s daughter, with whom she played Juliet and Lady Macbeth alternately, having translated for her “La Fille de Roland,” in which she has since appeared with great success.  She was then but seventeen and a half, and had never possessed a diamond, when on returning home from church one Sunday morning, she found a little jewel case containing a magnificent diamond cross, an acknowledgment from the manager of her services to his company.  The gift was the more appreciated from the fact that it was a very exceptional specimen of managerial generosity in America!

The criticisms of the press during the early years of Mary Anderson’s theatrical career are full of interest, viewed in the light of her after and firmly established success.  They show that the American people were not slow to recognize the genius of the young girl, who was destined hereafter to spread a luster on the stage of two continents.  At the same time they are full either of a ridiculous praise which is blind to the presence of the least fault, and would have turned the head of a young girl not endowed with the sturdy common sense possessed by Mary Anderson; or they are marked by a vindictive animosity which defeats its very object, and practically attracts public notice in favor of an actress it is obviously meant to crush.  These newspaper criticisms are further amusing as showing the family likeness which exists between the genus “dramatic critic” on both sides of the Atlantic.  Each seems to believe that he carries the fate of the actor in his inkhorn.  Each seems blind to the fact that Vox populi vox Dei; that favorable criticism never yet made an artist, who had not within him the power to win the popular favor; still more, that adverse criticism can never extinguish the heaven-sent spark of true artistic fire.

The verdict of Louisville on its home-grown actress has been given in a preceding chapter.  The estimate, however, of strangers is of far more value than that of friends or acquaintance.  The judgment of St. Louis, where Mary Anderson played her earliest engagements away from home is, on the whole, the most interesting dramatic criticism of her early performances on record.  St. Louis is a city of considerable culture, and stands in much the same relation to the South as does its modern rival Chicago to the North-West.  Its newspapers are some of the ablest on the continent, and its audiences perhaps as critical as any in America if we except perhaps such places as Boston or New York.

The St. Louis Globe Democrat says:—­