I have asked you to let me put your name here, that I might have the
opportunity of saying how much pleasure I owe to your romances. They
make one a boy again while one is reading them; and the student of "The
Witch's Head" and of "King Solomon's Mines" is as young, in heart, as
when he hunted long ago with Chingachgook and Uncas. You, who know the
noble barbarian in his African retreats, appear to retain more than most
men of his fresh natural imagination. We are all savages under our white
skins; but you alone recall to us the delights and terrors of the world's
nonage. We are hunters again, trappers, adventurers bold, while we study
you, and the blithe barbarian wakens even in the weary person of letters.
He forgets proof-sheets and papers, and the "young lion" seeks his food
from God, in the fearless ancient way, with bow or rifle. Of all modern
heroes of romance, the dearest to me is your faithful Zulu, and I own I
cried when he bade farewell to his English master, in "The Witch's Head."
In the following tales the natural man takes a hand, but he is seen
through civilized spectacles, not, as in your delightful books, with the
eyes of the sympathetic sportsman. If Why-Why and Mr. Gowles amuse you a
little, let this be my Diomedean exchange of bronze for gold--of the new
Phaeacia for Kukuana land, or for that haunted city of Kor, in which your
fair Ayesha dwells undying, as yet unknown to the future lovers of She.
Very sincerely yours,
A. LANG.
CROMER, August 29, 1886.