wer of genius which shone out in the
beautiful child long before she was able fully to understand whither the
resistless promptings to tread the "mimic stage of life" were leading her.
In the end the New World gained an actress of whom it may be well proud,
and the Old World has been fain to confess that it has no monopoly of the
highest types of histrionic genius.

Mary Anderson was born at Sacramento, on the Pacific slope, on the 28th of
July, 1859, but removed with her parents to Kentucky, when but six months
old. German and English blood are mingled in her veins, her mother being
of German descent, while her father was the grandson of an Englishman. On
the outbreak of the civil war he joined the ranks of the Southern armies,
and fell fighting under the Confederate flag before Mobile. When but three
years old Mary Anderson was left fatherless, and a year or two afterward
she and her little brother Joseph found almost more than a father's love
and care in her mother's second husband, Dr. Hamilton Griffin, an old
Southern planter, who had abandoned his plantations at the outbreak of the
war, and after a successful career as an army surgeon, established himself
in practice at Louisville.

Mary Anderson's early years were characteristic of her future. She was one
of those children whose wild artist nature chafes under the restraints of
home and school life. Generous to a fault, the life and soul of her
companions, yet to control her taxed to their utmost the parental
resources; and it must be admitted she was the torment of her teachers.
Her wild exuberant spirits overleaped the bounds of school life, and
sometimes made order and discipline difficult of enforcement. She was
never known to tell an untruth, but at the same time she would never
confess to a fault. Imprisoned often for punishment in a room, she would
steadfastly refuse to admit that she had done wrong, and, maternal
patience exhausted, the mutinous little culprit had commonly to be
released impenitent and unconfessed. Indeed her wildness acquired for her
the name of "Little Mustang;" as, later on, her fondness for poring over
books beyond her childish years that of "Little Newspaper." At school, the
confession must be made, she was refractory and idle. The prosaic routine
of school life was dull and distasteful to the child, who, at ten years of
age, found her highest delight in the plays of Shakespeare. Many of her
school hours were spent in a corner, face