CONVERTED WHILE WRITING HIS OWN BOOK.
“I was in quest of knowledge, but I had no faith to sustain, no creed to bolster up. The result was that the whole field of religious and biblical history opened up before me, and, my vision not being clouded by previously formed opinions, I was enabled to survey it without the aid of lenses. I believe I was thorough and persistent. I know I was conscientious in my search for the truth. I weighed, I analyzed, I counted and compared. The evolution from conjecture into knowledge, through opinion and belief, was gradual but irresistible; and at length I stood firmly and defiantly on the solid rock. Upward of seven hundred thousand copies of ‘Ben Hur’ have been published, and it has been translated into all languages from French to Arabic; but, whether it has ever influenced the mind of a single reader or not, I am sure its conception and preparation, if it has done nothing more, has convinced its author of the divinity of the lowly Nazarene who walked and talked with God.”
XXVIII
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.”