On October 16, 1880, Mlle. Bernhardt sailed for New York. On November 8, at Booth’s Theatre, she made her first appearance in America in _Adrienne Lecouvreur_, which, with much success, she had added to her repertoire since leaving the _Comédie_.[30] Her triumph was immediate. She had been told that New York would receive her coldly. At the end of the play, however, “there was quite a manifestation and everyone was deeply moved,” while after the play a large crowd serenaded and cheered before her hotel. Sarah had been put on her mettle, and, as always, she did her best in the face of possible opposition. And these ovations repeated themselves in each city, both in the United States and in Canada. The Bishop of Montreal took it upon himself to condemn Bernhardt, her company, her plays, the authors and French literature in general. As if in reply to his utterances, the public flocked to see Sarah. As is usual with such strictures, the Bishop had given the best possible advertising[31] and each night Sarah’s sleigh was dragged by cheering men. Wherever she went, her astute managers saw to it that the Bernhardtian advertising tradition was maintained: She went to Menlo Park to call on Thomas A. Edison; at Boston she visited a captive live whale in the harbor, and stood (and fell!) upon its back; in Canada she visited a tribe of Iroquois; at Montreal she ventured on the ice in the St. Lawrence and put her life in peril; visiting the Colt factory at Springfield, Massachusetts, she fired off some newly invented cannon;--“it amused me very much without procuring me any emotion,” she wrote; at Chicago she witnessed the slaughtering of pigs at the stock-yards; in St. Louis her jewelry was exhibited in a store window; at Niagara she again endangered her life by getting herself into an awkward place on the ice bridge below the falls. Her object was accomplished, at all events. She had won in America a new fame and a much needed fortune. She had earned more than one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. She was now able to pay her debt to the _Française_, and had a comfortable sum left. And her return to France was a veritable return from Elba. Her vessel was met by scores of small boats, gay with welcoming flags, and the wharves held thousands of people shouting: “_Vive_ Sarah Bernhardt!” Her first performance in France of _La Dame aux Camélias_, at Havre in May, 1881, was “a perfect triumph.”