That was so, ye ken.  I had my trade to fall back upon.  So I read all the advertisements, and at last I saw one put in by the manager of a concert party that was about to mak’ a Scottish tour.  He wanted a comic, and, after we’d exchanged two or three letters we had an interview.  I sang some songs for him, and he engaged me, at thirty-five shillings a week—­about eight dollars, in American money—­a little more.

That seemed like a great sum to me in those days.  It was no so bad.  Money went farther then, and in Scotland especially, than it does the noo!  And for me it was a fortune.  I’d been doing well, in the mine, if I earned fifteen in a week.  And this was for doing what I would rather do than anything in the wide, wide world!  No wonder I went back to Hamilton and hugged my wife till she thought I’d gone crazy.

I had been engaged as a comic singer, but I had to do much more than sing on that tour, which was to last fourteen weeks—­it started, I mind, at Beith, in Ayrshire.  First, when we arrived in a town, I had to see that all the trunks and bags were taken from the station to the hall.  Then I would set out with a pile of leaflets, describing the entertainment, and distribute them where it seemed to me they would do the most good in drawing a crowd.  That was my morning’s work.

In the afternoon I was a stage carpenter, and devoted myself to seeing that every thing at the hall was ready for the performance in the evening.  Sometimes that was easy; sometimes, in badly equipped halls, the task called for more ingenuity than I had ever before supposed that I possessed.  But there was no rest for me, even then; I had to be back at the hall after tea and check up part of the house.  And then all I had to do was what I had at first fondly supposed I had been engaged to do—­sing my songs!  I sang six songs regularly every night, and if the audience was good to me and liberal in its applause I threw in two or three encores.

I had never been so happy in my life.  I had always been a great yin for the open air and the sunshine, and here, for years, I had spent all my days underground.  I welcomed the work that went with the engagement, for it kept me much out of doors, and even when I was busy in the halls, it was no so bad—­I could see the sunlight through the windows, at any rate.  And then I could lie abed in the morning!

I had been used so long to early rising that I woke up each day at five o’clock, no matter how late I’d gone to bed the nicht before.  And what a glorious thing it was to roll right over and go to sleep again!  Then there was the travelling, too.  I had always wanted to see Scotland, and now, in these fourteen weeks, I saw more of my native land than, as a miner, I might have hoped to do in fourteen years—­or forty.  Little did I think, though, then, of the real travelling I was to do later in my life, in the career that was then just beginning!

I made many friends on that first tour.  And to this day nothin’ delights me more than to have some in an audience seek me out and tell me that he or she heard me sing during those fourteen weeks.  There is a story that actually happened to me that delights me, in connection with that.