Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/365

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360
HARRISON.
HARRISON.

attention of the bar in the community Two children are the offspring of their union. Russell H , and Mary Scott Harrison, now Mrs. McKee. Mrs. Harrison has always been a home-loving woman, of a CAROLINE LAVINIA SCOTT HARRISON. decidedly domestic turn, and noted for her perfect housekeeping. Well born and educated, she has kept pace with her husband intellectually, and has always taken an intelligent interest in all that pertained to his business or success in life. Since her husband's inauguration as President and her installation as mistress, the White House has gone through a thorough course of repairs, such as it never experienced before, notable as were several of its former occupants for good housekeeping. The results are very gratifying and greatly enhance the convenience and comfort of the household. Mrs. Harrison will go on record as the warm advocate of the extension of the family part of the executive buildings, which have long since ceased to equal the residences of wealthy representative citizens in Washington and other places. Mrs. Harrison comes of good Revolutionary stock, and she is the first president chosen to preside over the Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which she does with much grace and dignity. Mrs. Harrison's administration will be remembered for her patronage of art. While not highly gifted with artistic ability herself, she does very clever work in both water-color and on china, and several struggling young artists owe much of their success to her patronage. She is not fond of public and official social life, its responsibilities being somewhat onerous to her, but she enjoys the society of her friends. In religion she is a Presbyterian. She is quietly interested in all that tends to build up the interests of the Church of the Covenant, where the family attend. Mrs. Harrison's character can be summed up in a few words. She is a well born, well educated woman of the domestic type, an interested patron of art, who also numbers among her chosen friends many persons distinguished for literary ability or high personal character. While she has enjoyed living in the White House, it has been as a woman of conservative character, who felt the responsibilities of her station more than she was uplifted by its honors and privileges.


CONSTANCE CARY HARRISON. HARRISON, Mrs. Constance Cary, author, born in Vaucluse, Fairfax county, Va., in 1835. She comes of an old Virginian family, related to the Fairfaxes and to Thomas Jefferson. Her youth was spent on the Vaucluse homestead, in a mansion that was destroyed during the Civil War to make place for a fort for the defense of the city of Washington. She saw much of the horrors of the war. After the restoration of peace, Miss Cary went to Europe with her mother. She witnessed the closing scenes of the reign of Louis Napoleon. Returning to the United States in 1867, she became the wife of Burton Harrison, a lawyer of Virginia. Several years after their marriage they removed to New York, where they now live. Mrs. Harrison began to write stories while she was yet a mere girl. In 1876 she published her first magazine story, "A Little Centennial Lady," which attracted attention, and since then she has written much and well. Her published books are "Golden Rod" (New York, 1880); "Helen of Troy" (1881); "Woman's Handiwork in Modern Homes " (1881); "Old-Fashioned Fairy Book" (1885), and "Bric-a-Brac Stories" (1886). She has written more recently "Flower de Hundred," a curious history of a Virginia family and plantation since 1650. She is the author of " My Lord Fairfax, of Greenway Court, in Virginia," and of "The Home and Haunts of Washington." She has produced several plays, chiefly adaptations from the French. One of these, "The Russian Honeymoon," was successfully produced in New York City in 1883. In 1890 her anonymous story, "The Anglomaniacs," appeared in the "Century Magazine," and