he affixed a good-sized spike, and one night Mary
Anderson, coming out as usual, drove this right through her foot, in her
sudden stop on the cliffs brink. Without flinching, or moving a muscle,
with Spartan fortitude she played the scene to the end, though almost
fainting with pain, till on the fall of the curtain the spiked staff was
drawn out, not without force. Longfellow was much concerned at this
accident, and on nights she did not play would sit by her side in her box,
and wrap the furred overcoat he used to wear carefully round her wounded
foot.

From Boston Mary Anderson proceeded to New York to fulfill a two weeks'
engagement at the Fifth Avenue Theater. She opened with a good company in
"The Lady of Lyons." General Sherman had advised her to read no papers,
but one morning to her great encouragement, some good friend thrust under
her door a very favorable notice in the New York _Herald_. The engagement
proved a great success, and was ultimately extended to six weeks, the
actress playing two new parts, Juliet and The Daughter of Roland. She had
passed the last ordeal successfully, and might rejoice as she stood on the
crest of the hill of Fame that the ambition of her young life was at
length realized. Her subsequent theatrical career in the States and Canada
need not be recorded here. She had become America's representative
_tragedienne_; there was none to dispute her claims. Year after year she
continued to increase an already brilliant reputation, and to amass one of
the largest fortunes it has ever been the happy lot of any artist to
secure.

CHAPTER V.

FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE.

In the summer of 1879, was paid Mary Anderson's first visit to Europe. It
had long been eagerly anticipated. In the lands of the Old World was the
cradle of the Art she loved so well, and it was with feelings almost of
awe that she entered their portals. She had few if any introductions, and
spent a month in London wandering curiously through the conventional
scenes usually visited by a stranger. Westminster Abbey was among her
favorite haunts; its ancient aisles, its storied windows, its thousand
memories of a past which antedated by so many centuries the civilization
of her native land, appealed deeply to the ardent imagination of the
impassioned girl. Here was a world of which she had read and dreamed, but
whose over-mastering, living influence was now for the first time felt. It
seemed like the first glimpse of verda