, he soon let out the secret of
the authorship of _The Fair Haven_, and it became advisable to put his
name to a second edition.

One result of his submitting the MS. of _Erewhon_ to Miss Savage was that
she thought he ought to write a novel, and urged him to do so. I have no
doubt that he wrote the memoir of John Pickard Owen with the idea of
quieting Miss Savage and also as an experiment to ascertain whether he
was likely to succeed with a novel. The result seems to have satisfied
him, for, not long after _The Fair Haven_, he began _The Way of All
Flesh_, sending the MS. to Miss Savage, as he did everything he wrote,
for her approval and putting her into the book as Ernest's Aunt Alethea.
He continued writing it in the intervals of other work until her death in
February, 1885, after which he did not touch it. It was published in
1903 by Mr. R. A. Streatfeild, his literary executor.

Soon after _The Fair Haven_ Butler began to be aware that his letter in
the _Press_, "Darwin among the Machines," was descending with further
modifications and developing in his mind into a theory about evolution
which took shape as _Life and Habit_; but the writing of this very
remarkable and suggestive book was delayed and the painting interrupted
by absence from England on business in Canada. He had been persuaded by
a college friend, a member of one of the great banking families, to call
in his colonial mortgages and to put the money into several new
companies. He was going to make thirty or forty per cent, instead of
only ten. One of these companies was a Canadian undertaking, of which he
became a director; it was necessary for someone to go to headquarters and
investigate its affairs; he went, and was much occupied by the business
for two or three years. By the beginning of 1876 he had returned finally
to London, but most of his money was lost and his financial position for
the next ten years caused him very serious anxiety. His personal
expenditure was already so low that it was hardly possible to reduce it,
and he set to work at his profession more industriously than ever, hoping
to paint something that he could sell, his spare time being occupied with
_Life and Habit_, which was the subject that really interested him more
deeply than any other.

Following his letter in the _Press_, wherein he had seen machines as in
process of becoming animate, he went on to regard them as living organs
and limbs which we had made outsid