n his long
sleep. But presently the wind rose to a storm, the branches of the
surrounding trees dashed against the windows, darkness spread through the
ghostly aisles, and terror-stricken, Mary fled to the door, glad enough to
be released by the returning janitor.

Rural England with its moss-grown farmhouses, its gray steeples, its white
cottages clustering under their shadow, its tiny fields, its green
hedgerows, garrisoned by the mighty elms, charmed Mary Anderson beyond
expression, contrasting so strongly with the vast prairies, the primeval
forests, the mighty rivers of her own giant land. These were the
boundaries of her horizon in the earlier months of her stay among us; she
knew little but the England of the past, and the England as the stranger
sees it, who passes on his travels through its smiling landscapes. But a
change of residence to Kensington brought Mary Anderson more within reach
of those whom she had so charmed upon the stage, and who longed to have
the opportunity of knowing her personally. By degrees her drawing-rooms
became the scene of an informal Sunday afternoon reception. Artists and
novelists, poets and sculptors, statesmen and divines, journalists and
people of fashion crowded to see her, and came away wondering at the skill
and power with which this young girl, evidently fresh to society, could
hold her own, and converse fluently and intelligently on almost any
subject. If the verdict of London society was that Mary Anderson was as
clever in the drawing-room as she was attractive on the stage, she, in her
turn, was charmed to speak face to face with many whose names and whose
works had long been familiar to her. It was a new world of art and
intellect and genius to which she was suddenly introduced, and which
seemed to her all the more brilliant after the somewhat prosaic uniformity
of society in her own republican land. To say that she admires and loves
England with all her heart may be safely asserted. To say that it has
almost succeeded in stealing away her heart from the land of her birth,
she would hardly like to hear said. But we think her mind is somewhat that
of Captain Macheath, in the "Beggars' Opera"--

"How happy could I be with either,
Were t'other dear charmer away."

One superiority, at least, she confesses England to have over America. The
dreadful "interviewer" who has haunted her steps for the last eight years
of her life with a dogged pertinacity which would take no