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 to the wall, and with a book on
her head, to restrain the mischievous habit of making faces at her
companions, which used to convulse the school with ill-suppressed
laughter. She would sally forth in the morning with her little satchel,
fresh and neat as a daisy, to return at night with frock in rents, and all
the buttons, if any way ornamental, given away in an impulsive generosity
to her schoolmates. It soon became evident that she would learn little or
nothing at school; and on a faithful promise to amend her ways if she
might only leave and pursue her studies at home, Mary Anderson was
permitted, when but thirteen years of age, to terminate her school career.
But instead of studying "Magnall's Questions," or becoming better
acquainted with "The Use of the Globes," she spent most of her time in
devouring the pages of Shakespeare, and committing favorite passages to
memory. To her childish fancy they seemed to open the gates of dreamland,
where she could hold converse with a world peopled by heroes, and live a
life apart from the prosaic everyday existence which surrounded her in a
modern American town. Shakespeare was the teacher who replaced the "school
marm," with her dull and formal lessons. Her quick perceptive mind grasped
his great and noble thoughts, which gave a vigor and robustness to her
mental growth. Since those days she has assimilated rather than acquired
knowledge, and there are now few women of her age whose information is
more varied, or whose conversation displays greater mental culture, and
higher intellectual development. Strangely enough, it was the male
characters of Shakespeare which touched Mary Anderson's youthful fancy;
and she studied with a passionate ardor such parts as Hamlet, Romeo, and
Richard III. With the wonderful intuition of an art-nature, she seems to
have felt that the cultivation of the voice was a first essential to
success. She ransacked her father's library for works on elocution, and