election of 1880, and met with a thoroughly enthusiastic reception, to proceed thence to Philadelphia, where she reaped plenty of honor, but very little money.  Boston, the Athens of the New World, was reached at length.  When Mary Anderson was taken down by the manager to see the vast Boston Theater, whose auditorium seats 4000 people, and which Henry Irving declared to be the finest in the world, she almost fainted with apprehension.  She opened here in Evadne, and one journal predicted that she would take Cushman’s place.  This part was followed by Juliet, Meg Merrilies, and her other chief impersonations.  On one day of her engagement the receipts at a matinee and an evening performance amounted together to the large sum of $7000.

The visit to Boston was made memorable to Mary Anderson by her introduction to Longfellow.  About a week after she had opened, a friend of the poet’s came to her with a request that she would pay him a visit at his pretty house in the suburbs of Boston, Longfellow being indisposed at the time, and confined to his quaint old study, overlooking the waters of the sluggish Charles, and the scenery made immortal in his verse.  Here was commenced a warm friendship between the beautiful young artist and the aged poet, which continued unbroken to the day of his death.  He was seated when she entered, in a richly-carved chair, of which Longfellow told her this charming story.  The “spreading chestnut tree,” immortalized in “The Village Blacksmith,” happened to stand in an outlying village near Boston, somewhat inconveniently for the public traffic at some cross roads.  It became necessary to cut it down, and remove the forge beneath.  But the village fathers did not venture to proceed to an act which they regarded as something like sacrilege, without consulting Longfellow.  At their request he paid a visit of farewell to the spot, and sanctioned what was proposed.  Not long after, a handsomely carved chair was forwarded to him, made from the wood of the “spreading chestnut tree,” and which bore an inscription commemorative of the circumstances under which it was given.  Few of his possessions were dearer to Longfellow than this dumb memento how deeply his poetry had sunk into the national heart of his countrymen.  It stood in the chimney corner of his study, and till the day of his death was always his favorite seat.

The verdict of Longfellow upon Mary Anderson is worth that of a legion of newspaper critics, and his judgment of her Juliet deserves to be recorded in letters of gold.  The morning after her benefit, he said to her, “I have been thinking of Juliet all night. Last night you were Juliet!”