Kentucky came to the front like a little man. General
Sherman, sitting at our elbow, wore out his gloves, blistered his hands,
and then borrowed a cotton umbrella from his neighbor. Miss Anderson, with
all her natural advantages, added to her love of the art, her indomitable
will as shown in her square prominent jaw, has a career before her, but it
is not down the path indicated by these enthusiastic friends. 'The steeps
where Fame's proud temple shines afar' are difficult of access, and genius
waters them with more tears than sturdy, steady, persevering talent.
"Charlotte Cushman told us once that the heaviest article she had to carry
up was her heart. The divine actress who now leads the English-spoken
stage began her professional career as a ballet dancer, and has grown her
laurels from her tears. We suspected Miss Anderson's success. It was too
triumphant, too easy. After years of weary labor, of heart-breaking
disappointments, of dreary obscurity, genius sometimes blazes out for a
brief period to dazzle humanity; and quite as often never blazes, but
disappears without a triumph.
"To such life is not a battle, but a campaign with ten defeats, yea,
twenty defeats to one victory.
"Miss Anderson will think us harsh and unkind in this. She will live, we
hope, to consider us her best friend.
"There is one fact upon which she can comfort herself: she could not get
two hours and a half of our time and a column in the _Capitol_ were she
without merit. There is value in her; but to fetch it out she must go
back, begin lower, and give years to training, education, and hard work.
She can labor ten years for the sake of living five. As for her support,
it was of the sort afforded by John T., the showman, and very funny. Mrs.
Germon, God bless her! was properly funny. She is the best old woman on
end in the world.
"Romeo (Mr. Morton) we have spoken of. Lingham is supposed to have done
Mercutio. Well, he did do him. That is, he went through the motions. He
seemed to be saying something anent the great case of Capulet _vs._
Montague, but so indistinct that there was a general sense of relief when
he staggered off to die. Deaths generally had this effect Thursday night,
and the house not only applauded the exits, but made itself exceedingly
merry.
"When Paris went down and a tombstone fell over him, his plaintive cry of
'Oh, I am killed!' was received with shouts of laughter.
"It was the most laughable we ever witnessed. In the first scene one of
those marble statues, so peculiar to John T.'s mismanagement, that
resemble granite in a bad state of small-pox, fell over.
"The house was amazed to see it resolve itself into a board, and laughed
tumultuously to note how it righted itself up in a mysterious manner, and
stood in an easy reclining posture till the curtain fell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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