To Mrs. Lauder’s surprise, and finally to her great vexation, coal men came tramping up our stairs every few minutes all afternoon, each one staggering under the weight of a hundredweight sack of coal.  She had ordered no coal and she wanted no coal, but still the coal men came—­a veritable pest of them.

They kept coming, too, until she discovered that little John was the author of their grimy pilgrimages to our door.  He was signalling every passing lorrie from the window in the Glasgow coal code!

I watched him from that window another day when he was quarreling with a number of playmates in the street below.  The quarrel finally ended in a fight.  John was giving one lad a pretty good pegging, when the others decided that the battle was too much his way, and jumped on him.

John promptly executed a strategic retreat.  He retreated with considerable speed, too.  I saw him running; I heard the patter of his feet on our stairs, and a banging at our door.  I opened it and admitted a flushed, disheveled little warrior, and I heard the other boys shouting up the stairs what they would do to him.

By the time I got the door closed, and got back to our little parlor, John was standing at the window, giving a marvelous pantomime for the benefit of his enemies in the street.  He was putting his small, clenched fist now to his nose, and now to his jaw, to indicate to the youngsters what he was going to do to them later on.

Those, and a hundred other little incidents, were as fresh in my memory as if they had only occurred yesterday.  His mother and I recalled them over and over again.  From the day John was born, it seems to me the only things that really interested me were the things in which he was concerned.  I used to tuck him in his crib at night.  The affairs of his babyhood were far more important to me than my own personal affairs.

I watched him grow and develop with enormous pride, and he took great pride in me.  That to me was far sweeter than praise from crowned heads.  Soon he was my constant companion.  He was my business confidant.  More—­he was my most intimate friend.

There were no secrets between us.  I think that John and I talked of things that few fathers and sons have the courage to discuss.  He never feared to ask my advice on any subject, and I never feared to give it to him.

I wish you could have known my son as he was to me.  I wish all fathers could know their sons as I knew John.  He was the most brilliant conversationalist I have ever known.  He was my ideal musician.

He took up music only as an accomplishment, however.  He did not want to be a performer, although he had amazing natural talent in that direction.  Music was born in him.  He could transpose a melody in any key.  You could whistle an air for him, and he could turn it into a little opera at once.

However, he was anxious to make for himself in some other line of endeavor, and while he was often my piano accompanist, he never had any intention of going on the stage.