The impression has been that Modjeska returned to the stage because of the failure of the farming experiment which was now to be made. To a certain extent this is true, but even before she reached California she certainly had vague plans to act again. In a letter from New York she had said: “It seems that I may be able to play in English, but first we must go to California, according to our original plan.... Perhaps after we get established in this new paradise I may pick up enough English to play there, and when I get more mastery over the new language, I may come here; for, however unattractive New York seems to me, it is the metropolis of America, and it will give me pleasure to conquer it.” This was surely forecasting the future. When she reached San Francisco, Edwin Booth was playing there. It was proposed that she act Ophelia in Polish, to his _Hamlet_. Rather to her relief, Booth, who had never heard of her, declined. She saw him as Antony and as Shylock and of course recognized him as the great actor that he was, though as yet she could not understand English.[58] As for the community farming experiment at Anaheim, it was a failure that would appear ludicrous if it were not for its element of tragedy. All of the experimenters were desperately homesick, and none of them had the least practical notion of the task they had set themselves. They talked more than they worked, quarreled and made up, and were generally helpless. Modjeska, the queen of the Warsaw stage, did the cooking, with the frightened assistance of a Polish maid they had taken from a convent to be a helper with the children.[59] They had several cows, but no one knew how to milk them, and their butter and milk they had to buy. The orange trees were too young to bear, the season was dry, the neighbors’ cattle ate the barley, the dogs ate the eggs, and the ready money was fast disappearing. The unfortunate town-bred would-be farmers were doomed to failure from the start. So Modjeska determined upon the courageous and difficult course which brought in time so great an addition to her fame. She decided to go to San Francisco, learn English, and go upon the American stage. In March, 1877, she wrote from San Francisco to a friend in Poland: “I am hard at work, studying. That was my secret plan, at the very beginning of our venture. Country life was simply to restore my health and strength, which it did so effectively that people give me twenty-four or twenty-six years of age, not more.... Next autumn I want to ask the president[60] which he prefers, either six thousand roubles for breaking my contract, or my return in two years with fame.”