The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1904-01-10
X ~RS. FRANCES HODGSON BUR-
MI NETT, whose social triumphs have
lVl equa1led her literary and dramatic:
successes, is thorough wom

successes, IS lHOIOuSH WOuldu VI
the world and "a Lady of Quality"
Prolonged residence in England, where
she was well known as a hostess both in Lon
don and at her country place. Maytham Hall,
Kent, and much sojourning in Continental
capitals have made her. in recent years, per
sonally a more conspicuous figure abroad
than in Washington, her former home, or IN
New York, where she resided last season for
the first time.
Now domiciled in an artistica1ly itted-up
house in the heart of the fashionable quarter
of the metropolis, Mrs. Burnett is, for the
time being at least, New Yorker.
%%%
Costly seated in big chair by the bright
wood fire in her drawing-room, Mrs. Burnett,
arrayed in pale green teagown, looked far
more the woman of leisure than the hard
working novelist and dramatist.
DO l like living in America again? Oh,
yes," she said. "It is more stimulating than
any other place, but it lacks repose.
The ideal arrangement, I think, is to be
able to divide ones time between America
and England.
Each gives what the other lacks Amer
leans, and particularly New Workers, live at
such high tension that one marvels how they
keep going.
The pace is too rapid, mentally and phys
ically. 1t gives them hyper-aesthesia.
DO you know that disease where the nerves
are so susceptible that they're raw" She ran
her fingers down the length of her arm sug
gestively
10 - she continued
rehectively, gazing into the cracking fire on
the hearth, that we are taking in too large an
area of thought and experience, knowing too
much about too many forms of life.
Nov those vibrating wires make the world
one, so that people and conditions in the
most remote parts of the earth are known to
81 think, perhaps, we speculate over them
too much-that it is crowding in the non-es
sential"
But don't you believe wide knowledge
of affairs and of people is broadening?" Mrs.
Burnett was asked.
when it does broaden" the reply,
but the danger is that excess, in some in
stances, you know, goes to the head.
"In this country we become intoxicated by
the very ART is electric-and everyone is
intent not only on living his or her life, but in
trying to know how all the rest of the lives
in the world are lived.
"It seems to me that the tendency among
American women these days is to analyze too
much
They are not satisfied to think; they think
about their thoughts. Appalling probing, is it
not?"
Mrs. Burnett laughed merrily.
mo wonder they have hyper-aesthesia. One
result, however, of so much introspection and
ANALYSIS is that it has developed more subtlety
of motion.
"When we lived more slowly and had less
to think about we were more stolid. Now our
intuitions are sharpened by knowledge.
"Do 1 think this is material age? No,
should say not.
"It seems to me that there is just as much
romance in the world as there ever was, and
lust as much response to it. The thing that
moves people, whether they know it or not,
is the appeal to the heart
"Men and women do not differ IN this re-
spect. The fact is, people who are sensitive
are not to be made unsensitive, and people
who are phlegmatic will remain so. 1t is all
matter of temperament.