The story had a basis of fact; the main incident was true. It happened, however, in Michigan rather than in Canada; but I placed the incident in Canada where it was just as true to the life. I was living in Hertfordshire at the time of writing the story, and that is why the English scenes were worked out in Hertfordshire and in London. When I had finished the tale, there came over me suddenly a kind of feeling that the incident was too bold and maybe too crude to be believed, and I was almost tempted to consign it to the flames; but the editor of ‘The English Illustrated Magazine’, Sir C. Kinloch-Cooke, took a wholly different view, and eagerly published it. The judgment of the press was favourable,--highly so--and I was as much surprised as pleased when Mr. George Moore, in the Hogarth Club one night, in 1894, said to me: “There is a really remarkable play in that book of yours, ‘The Translation, of a Savage’.” I had not thought up to that time that my work was of the kind which would appeal to George Moore, but he was always making discoveries. Meeting him in Pall Mall one day, he said to me: “My dear fellow, I have made a great discovery. I have been reading the Old Testament. It is magnificent. In the mass of its incoherence it has a series of the most marvellous stories. Do you remember--” etc. Then he came home and had tea with me, revelling, in the meantime, on having discovered the Bible! I cannot feel that ‘The Translation of a Savage’ has any significance beyond the truthfulness with which I believe it describes the transformation, or rather the evolution, of a primitive character into a character with an intelligence of perception and a sympathy which is generally supposed to be the outcome of long processes of civilisation and culture. The book has so many friends--this has been sufficiently established by the very large sale it has had in cheap editions--that I am still disposed to feel it was an inevitable manifestation in the progress of my art, such as it is. People of diverse conditions of life have found in it something to interest and to stimulate. One of the most volcanic of the Labour members in the House of Commons told me that the violence of his opposition to me in debate on a certain bill was greatly moderated by the fact that I had written ‘The Translation of a Savage’; while a certain rather grave duke remarked to me concerning the character of Lali that “She would have been all right anywhere.” I am bound to say that he was a duke who, while a young man, knew the wilds of Canada and the United States almost as well as I know Westminster. THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE CHAPTER I. HIS GREAT MISTAKE