A Social Leader, Having “Eyes That See,” Earns Literary Laurels.
MRS. BURTON HARRISON, the gifted American authoress, is a charming
woman socially. She is unaffected in manner, and easy and graceful in
conversation. When I called, I was ushered into her library and study,
and was entertained in the same delightful way in which her books
are written. Indeed, she told me that she writes without effort, and
endeavors to do so naturally.
It was a pretty story she told me of her childhood days in Old
Virginia, where she spent the greater part of her time in reading
standard works, and in dreaming of an almost unformed ambition. “Even
in my youngest years,” she said, “I used to make up fairy tales. Later,
I put my thoughts on paper.”
“And what was your first experience in a literary way?” I asked.
“When I was about seventeen years old, I sent a love story to the
‘Atlantic Monthly.’ It was lurid and melancholy,” she said, with a
smile. “It was returned in due course of time, and across its face was
written, in very bright ink, ‘This is far better than the average, and
ought to be read through,’ from which I inferred that only the first
page had been read. But I was encouraged even by that.”