l figure clad in a
simple black robe, unrelieved by a single ornament, is slight, and almost
girlish, though there is a rounded fullness in its line which betrays that
womanhood has been reached. A small classic head carried with easy grace;
finely chiseled features; full, deep, gray eyes; and crowning all a wealth
of auburn hair, from which peeps, as she turns, a pink, shell-like ear;
these complete a picture which seems to belong to another clime and
another age, and lives hardly but on the canvas of Titian. We are almost
sorry to enter the room and break the spell. Mary Anderson's manner as she
starts up from the organ with a light elastic spring to greet her visitors
is singularly gracious and winning. There is a frank fearlessness in the
beautiful speaking eyes so full of poetry and soul, a mingled tenderness
and decision in the mouth, with an utter absence of that
self-consciousness and coquetry which often mar the charm of even the most
beautiful face. This is the artist's study to which she flies back gladly,
now and then, for a few weeks' rest and relaxation from the exacting life
of a strolling player, whose days are spent wandering in pursuit of her
profession over the vast continent which stretches from the Atlantic to
the Pacific. Here she may be found often busy with her part when the faint
rose begins to steal over the tree tops at early dawn; or sometimes when
the world is asleep, and the only sounds are the wind, as it sighs
mournfully through the neighboring wood, or the far-off murmur of the
Atlantic waves as they dash sullenly upon the beach. On a still summer's
night she will wander sometimes, a fair Rosalind, such as Shakespeare
would have loved, in the neighboring grove, and wake its silent echoes as
she recites the Great Master's lines; or she will stand upon the
flower-clad veranda, under the moonlight, her hair stirred softly by the
summer wind, and it becomes to her the balcony from which Juliet murmurs
the story of her love to a ghostly Romeo beneath.

A large English deerhound, who was dozing at her feet when we entered the
room, starts up with his mistress, and after a lazy stretch seems to ask
to join in the welcome. Mary Anderson explains that he is an old favorite,
dear from his resemblance to a hound which figures in some of the
portraits of Mary Queen of Scots. He has failed ignominiously in an
attempted training for a dramatic career, and can do no more than howl a
doleful and distract