[152] One who was present told William Winter “that notwithstanding the conditions inseparable from youth and inexperience, it was a performance of extraordinary fire, feeling and promise. Its paramount beauty, he said, was its vocalism. Miss Anderson’s voice, indeed, was always her predominant charm. Certain tones of it--so thrilling, so full of wild passion and inexpressible melancholy--went straight to the heart, and brought tears into the eyes.”--_Other Days._ Throughout her career all observers noted the richness and expressiveness of Mary Anderson’s voice, especially its thrilling lower tones. After she retired from the stage, indeed, she paid considerable attention to singing, and once sang in public, in a small way, for charity. [153] Henry Watterson, the journalist of Louisville and one of Miss Anderson’s earliest friends and advisers, tells this story to indicate the self-reliance that was the cue to her success: “On one occasion, after a long discussion, the counselor whom she had sought, quite worn out with his failure to convince her, exclaimed with some irritation: ‘Don’t you know that I am double your age, and have gone over all this ground, and can’t be mistaken?’ ‘No,’ she coolly replied, ‘I don’t know anything I have not gone over myself.’ She considered everything that was relevant, consulted everybody who could give information, and decided for herself.” [154] It was during this engagement, that the young actress played for the first time the character of Meg Merriles, thus, perhaps unwisely, challenging comparison with Charlotte Cushman, who had made the part peculiarly her own. [155] It does Mary Anderson nothing but credit to point out that at the time she was first claiming the attention of the East she had not yet grown to be quite the Mary Anderson the world remembers. She was already beautiful, but she was as yet a comparatively friendless, inexperienced young girl, ignorant of much of the art of the theatre and with undeveloped taste in dress; yet self-confident and perhaps just a bit spoiled. The manager of the theatre at which she played her first engagement in New York (in November, 1877) long afterward remembered its details. On the opening night “there was about three hundred dollars in money and a good paper house. Never was a Pauline attired in such execrable taste. The ladies of the audience could not conceal their smiles; but in the cottage scene Miss Anderson’s fine voice and her beauty captured everybody. Other plays followed. As Parthenia she looked a picture in her simple costume, and her manner of saying ‘I go to cleanse the cup’ enchanted the audience. As Bianca in _Fazio_ she wore modern costumes, and but for her youthful beauty would have been absurd.