It was a long trip, but it was a happy one.  How long ago it seems now, as I write, in this new day of war!  How far away are all the common, kindly things that then I did not notice, and that now I would give the world and a’ to have back again!

Then, everywhere I went, they pressed their dainties upon me whenever I sat down for a sup and a bite.  The board groaned with plenty.  I was in a rich country, a country where there was enough for all, and to spare.  And now, as I am writing I am travelling again across America.  And there is not enough.  When I sit down at table there is a card of Herbert Hoover’s, bidding me be careful how I eat and what I choose.  Ay, but he has no need to warn me!  Well I know the truth, and how America is helping to feed her allies over there, and so must be sparing herself.

To think of it!  In yon far day the world was all at peace.  And now that great America, that gave so little thought to armies and to cannon, is fighting with my ain British against the Hun!

It was in March of 1914 that we sailed from San Francisco, on the tenth of the month.  It was a glorious day as we stood on the deck of the old Pacific liner Sonoma.  I was eager and glad to be off.  To be sure, America had been kinder to me than ever, and I was loath, in a way, to be leaving her and all the friends of mine she held—­old friends of years, and new ones made on that trip.  But I was coming back.  And then there was one great reason for my eagerness that few folk knew—­that my son John was coming to meet me in Australia.  I was missing him sore already.

They came aboard the old tubby liner to see us off, friends by the score.  They kept me busy shaking hands.

“Good-by, Harry,” they said.  And “Good luck, Harry,” they cried.  And just before the bugles sounded all ashore I heard a few of them crooning an old Scots song: 

“Will ye no come back again?”

“Aye, I’ll come back again!” I told them when I heard them.

“Good, Harry, good!” they cried back to me.  “It’s a promise!  We’ll be waiting for you—­waiting to welcome you!”

And so we sailed from San Francisco and from America, out through the Golden Gate, toward the sunset.  Here was beauty for me, who loved it new beauty, such as I had not seen before.  They were quiet days, happy days, peaceful days.  I was tired after my long tour, and the days at sea rested me, with good talk when I craved it, and time to sleep, and no need to give thought to trains, or to think, when I went to bed, that in the night they’d rouse me from my sleep by switching my car and giving me a bump.

We came first to Hawaii, and I fell in love with the harbor of Honolulu as we sailed in.  Here, at last, I began to see the strange sights and hear the strange sounds I had been looking forward to ever since I left my wee hoose at Dunoon.  Here was something that was different from anything that I had ever seen before.