discovering on one occasion "Rush on the Voice," proceeded, for many weeks
before it became known to her parents, to commence under its guidance the
task of building up a somewhat weak and ineffective organ into a voice
capable of expressing with ease the whole gamut of feeling from the
fiercest passion to the tenderest sentiment, and which can fill with a
whisper the largest theater.

The passion for a theatrical career seems to have been born in the child.
At ten she would recite passages from Shakespeare, and arrange her room to
represent appropriately the stage scene. Her first visit to the theater
was when she was about twelve, one winter's evening, to see a fairy piece
called "Puck." The house was only a short distance from her home at
Louisville, and she and her little brother presented themselves at the
entrance door hours before the time announced for the performance. The
door-keeper happened to observe the children, and thinking they would
freeze standing outside in the wintry wind, good naturedly opened the door
and admitted Mary Anderson to Paradise--or what seemed like it to her--the
empty benches of the dress circle, the dim half-light, the mysterious
horizon of dull green curtain, beyond which lay Fairyland. Here for two or
three hours she sat entranced, till the peanut boy made his appearance to
herald the approach of the glories of the evening. From that date the die
of Mary Anderson's destiny was cast. The theater became her world. She
looked with admiring interest on a super, or even a bill-sticker, as they
passed the windows of her father's house; and an actor seen in the streets
in the flesh filled her with the same reverent awe and admiration as
though the gods had descended from their serene heights to mingle in the
dust with common mortals. We are not sure that she still retains this
among the other illusions of her youth!

The person who seems to have fixed Mary Anderson's theatrical destiny was