But if the New Orleans engagement was little less than a triumph, her next important venture, in San Francisco, was nothing more than a disaster. It is an example of the heart-breaking trials that come to the most successful actors that Mary Anderson, phenomenally fortunate so far, failed dismally in San Francisco with both public and press. The engagement was at John McCullough’s theatre, and it was only on the last two nights that she made the anticipated favorable impression. Much of this trouble originated with the indifference or worse of her fellow actors, the members of the resident stock company. In those days a traveling “star,” instead of taking with him on his tours his own company, as at present, went practically alone and depended for support on the permanent stock company in each town--a system which did not make for artistic excellence, and which often gave occasion to just such jealousy and hostility as helped to make Mary Anderson’s stay in San Francisco unhappy. There was one bright spot, however. Edwin Booth was in the city, and she met him for the first time. When she was tempted to quit the stage disheartened, he said to her: “I have sat through two of your performances from beginning to end--the first time I have done such a thing in years--and I have not only been interested but impressed and delighted. You have begun well. Continue, and you are sure of success in the end.” The words were of immense encouragement. There followed a tour of the South. In contrast to the venture in the state of her birth, Miss Anderson was successful everywhere. She grew fond of the South and made in Washington and elsewhere several of those friendships for which her career was noteworthy. There was a quality in Mary Anderson that attracted and held the interest and affection of the people best worth knowing. In Grant she found a modest simplicity which she greatly liked; in Sherman, a hearty personality and an interest in what directly interested her--the stage. General Sherman was a good enough friend, indeed, to consider himself entitled to correct the growing girl’s tendency to stoop, and her illegible handwriting.