Mary Anderson, the tragedienne, is the most phenomenal success of late years. She was born July 28, 1859, in Sacramento, California. Her parents removed to Louisville when she was one year and a half old, and there she was educated in the Ursuline Convent. She had a longing to be an actress from her earliest years, and all her readings tended in the direction of the stage. She was taken away from school at the age of thirteen, to pursue her studies for the profession to which she seemed to be so strongly inclined. At the age of fifteen she went to Cincinnati to see Charlotte Cushman act. While there she called on Miss Cushman, who said she could give her only a five-minute audience. Miss Anderson recited passages from "Richard III.," Schiller's "Maid of Orleans," and "Hamlet." She remained with Miss Cushman three hours, and the great actress had such confidence in her talents that she told her to study a few hours each day for a year and then she might go on the stage. This Miss Anderson did. An accident of some kind or other left Macauley's Theatre in Louisville with a Saturday night for which there was no attraction. Macauley knew Miss Anderson's desire to go on the stage, and meeting her step-father, Dr. Hamilton Griffin, in the street, told him the girl, who was then only sixteen, might have the theatre that night. Miss Anderson was overjoyed. She chose _Juliet_ for her debut, got a costume hurriedly together and after one rehearsal and three days' preparation, appeared before a large audience, and made a decided hit. This was on November 27, 1875. Macauley was so pleased with the debutante that he gave her his first open week at starring terms. She then went to St. Louis, in March, 1870, and added greatly to the reputation she had won in her home city. Mr. John W. Norton supported her. Ben De Bar sent her to his New Orleans Theatre, and while in the Crescent City she was presented, by the citizens, with a check for $500, and the Washington artillery presented her with a jewelled badge of the battalion. Returning to Louisville again she continued her studies through the summer, began starring the following season, and has been before the public ever since. She is a young lady of remarkable personal beauty, intelligent and accomplished, a hard student, and one of the noblest and fairest of her sex that ever adorned the stage. [Illustration: LOTTA.]