The record of those six early years after her first appearance, and before she went to Daly, is one of the most amazing industry and progress. She played for a time with the Byrons, and made while with them her first appearance in New York (1873) in a small part in _The Thoroughbred_. Soon she went to Philadelphia for her first regular engagement, as a member of Mrs. John Drew’s company at the Arch Street Theatre. John Drew, the younger, the present actor of that name, made his first appearance at about the same time, also in Mrs. Drew’s company. Here Miss Rehan remained for two seasons (1873–75) receiving much valuable training, though as yet she played only subordinate parts. Then came several seasons of “stock”--“stock” according to the old-fashioned system, in which the “stars” wandered from city to city, finding in each place a company ready to support them in the standard plays and ready to “get up” in new plays at short notice. As many of the “stars” acted in the same plays, the stock company was less like the present day organization so called, which presents a new play each week and then drops it for good, than like a “repertoire company,” with a number of plays always thoroughly at its command. The system made for thorough training, as it combined with a wide range of material opportunities for many performances of any given play. The later Daly company, often called a stock company, was really such a repertoire company save that it boasted its own fixed and brilliant “star,” Ada Rehan. After her two years with Mrs. John Drew, Miss Rehan went to Louisville to join the stock company of Macauley’s Theatre, where she remained one season (1875–6). If she had remained a few months longer she would have assisted in the _début_ there of Mary Anderson. She followed her year in Louisville with two seasons (1876–8) as a member of John W. Albaugh’s company in Albany.[133] Here it was, in December, 1877, while she was playing Bianca in _Katherine and Petruchio_,[134] that Augustin Daly first saw her and observed her exceptional talent. At the end of her service with Mr. Albaugh she was but twenty-three. And yet she had been a regularly engaged professional actress for five years, had played Ophelia to Booth’s Hamlet and Lady Anne to John McCullough’s Richard III, besides acting at various times Cordelia in _Lear_, Desdemona in _Othello_, Celia in _As You Like It_, and Olivia in _Twelfth Night_, and had appeared not only with Booth and McCullough but with Adelaide Neilson, Lawrence Barrett, John Brougham, John T. Raymond, and many of the other “stars” of the day.[135]