It may be, you’ll understand, that some of the songs I canna use are very good.  Other singers have taken a song I have rejected and made a great success wi’ it.  But that means just nothing at a’ tae me.  I’m glad the song found it’s place—­that’s all.  I canna put a song on unless it suits me—­unless I feel, when I’m reading it, that here’s something I can do so my audience will like to hear me do it.  I flatter myself that I ken weel enough what the folk like that come to hear me—­and, in any case, I maun be the judge.

But, every sae oft, there’ll be a batch of songs I’ve put aside to think aboot a wee bit more before I decide.  And then I’ll tell my wife, of a morning, that I’d like tae have her listen tae a few songs that seemed to me micht do.

“All richt,” she’ll say.  “But hurry up I’m making scones the day.”

She’s a great yin aboot the hoose, is Mrs. Lauder.  We’ve to be awa’ travelling sae much that she says it rests her to work harder than a scullery maid whiles she’s at hame.  And it’s certain I’d rather eat scones of her baking than any I’ve ever tasted.

I always sit sae that I can watch her whiles I’m reading.  She never lets me get very far wi’oot some comment.

“No bad,” she’ll murmur, whiles, and I’ll gae on, for that means a muckle frae her.  Then, maybe, instead o’ that, she’ll just listen, and I’ll see she’s no sure.  If she mutters a little I’ll gae on, too, for that still means she’s making up her mind.  But when she says, “Stop yer ticklin’!” I always stop.  For that means the same thing they meant in Rome when they turned their thumbs doon toward a gladiator.  And her judgments aye been gude enow for me.

Sometimes I’ll get long letters frae authors wha send me their songs—­ but nearly always they’re frae those that wad be flattered tae be called authors, puir bodies who’ve no proper notion of how to write or how to go aboot getting what they’ve written accepted when they’ve done it.  I mind a man in Lancashire who sent me songs for years.  The first was an awfu’ thing—­it had nae meaning at a’ that I could see.  But his letter was a delight.

“Dear Harry,” he wrote.  “I’ve been sorry for a long time that so clever a man as you had such bad songs to sing.  And so, though I’m busy most of the time, I’ve written one for you.  I like you, so I’ll only charge you a guinea for every time you sing it, and let you set your own music to it, too!”

It was a generous offer, surely, but I did not see my way clear to accept it, and the song went back immediately.  A little later I got another.  He wrote a very dignified letter this time; he’d evidently made up his mind to forgie me for the way I’d insulted him and his song before, but he wanted me to understand he’d have nae nonsense frae me.  But this time he wanted only fifteen shilling a performance.

Weel, he kept on sending me songs, and each one was worse than the one before, though you’d never have thought it possible for anything to be worse than any one of them if you’d seen them!  And each time his price went doon!  The last one was what he called a “grand new song.”