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

It appeared that Armour had made the great mistake of his life. When
people came to know, they said that to have done it when sober had shown
him possessed of a kind of maliciousness and cynicism almost pardonable,
but to do it when tipsy proved him merely weak and foolish. But the fact
is, he was less tipsy at the time than was imagined; and he could have
answered to more malice and cynicism than was credited to him. To those