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.” HER FIRST NOVEL. “My next attempt was a novel, which I called ‘Skirmishing.’ It was destroyed in a fire, for which I have ever since felt grateful.” Miss Constance Cary (her maiden name), next went abroad with her widowed mother, and spent some years in traveling and in completing her education. “It was not until after I returned to America,” she said, “and was married to Mr. Harrison, that I was again bold enough to take up my pen. I wrote a little article, which I called ‘A Little Centennial Lady.’ It was published in ‘Scribner’s Magazine,’ and had so favorable a reception that I was encouraged to write ‘Golden Rod,’ a story of Mount Desert, which appeared later in ‘Harper’s Magazine.’” BOOKS SHE ENJOYED. “My books that I have enjoyed most, if a writer may enjoy her own work, have not been those dealing with New York social life, but my tales of the south. Charles A. Dana, of the New York ‘Sun,’ was unconsciously responsible for my ‘Old Dominion.’ He gave me the agreeable task of editing the ‘Monticello Letters,’ and from them I gleaned a story which outlined my ‘Old Dominion.’ But the editors cry for stories of New York social life, to gratify the popular demand.” Mrs. Harrison’s books are so well known that it is unnecessary to dwell on their acknowledged merit, vividness, and truthfulness to life. To the general public, there is something fascinating about a New York social story, dealing with the millionaire’s club life, woman’s teas, and love’s broken lances. Besides the general desire for a good social novel, there is a morbid, unsatiated desire to pry into the doings, customs and manners of the rich. It is with agreeable expectations that one picks up one of Mrs. Harrison’s books; it is almost with the knowledge that you will be entertained. HER CHARACTERS ARE FROM LIFE. On a former call, she told me that her New York stories are built on her observations, and that the characters are so changed as not to antagonize her friends, for she enters the best society through her family ties and her well-earned prestige.