The writing of a book of the kind admitted of no
invasion from extraneous sources, and that was why, while writing 'The
Translation of a Savage' at Hampstead, my letters were only delivered
to me once a week. I saw no friends, for no one knew where I was; but I
walked the heights, I practised with my golf clubs on the Heath, and I
sat in the early autumn evenings looking out at London in that agony of
energy which its myriad lives represented. It was a good time.

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 ar