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6
PREFACE.
become the pastor of Shawmut Church, that one of my
fellow-members asked for this story, but lack of time and
press of many duties prevented my fulfillment of the
promise then given until this year.
I can scarcely say that " Honda the Samurai " is a story
" founded on fact," but rather that the whole edifice of
fiction is a mass of facts cemented together with a little
imagination and fancy. In the first part of the book I have
pictured in short stories ancient and mediaeval Japan. I
next show the change of the Japanese mind in the rush
of events that followed the arrival of Perry's invincible
but peaceful armada, and then the nation's growth from
1868 to 1890. The story is a string of pictures of what I
saw, or heard, or knew to exist, in " the country between
heaven and earth." Portions of the descriptive matter in
the book have already appeared
in the author's contribu-
tions to periodical literature, but so rewritten as to be
hardly recognizable even to former readers, while the
narrative is wholly new.
May the story bind in new sympathy and friendship
Japanese and Americans; and in new love and consecra-
tion to the Master all his followers, on both sides of the
Pacific !
SHAWMUT CHUBCH, BOSTON,
October 1, 1890.
W. E. G.