There were plenty like that, ye’ll ken.  Some was a wee bit jealous.  Some, who’d known me my life lang, couldna believe I could hope to do the things it was in my heart and mind to try.  They believed they were giving me gude advice when they bade me be content and not tempt providence.

“Man, Harry, listen to me,” said one old friend.  “Ye’ve done fine.  Ye’re a braw laddie, and we’re all prood o’ ye the noo.  Don’t seek to be what ye can never be.  Ye’ll stand to lose all ye’ve got if ye let pride rule ye.”

I never whispered my real ambition to anyone in yon days—­saving the wife, and Mackenzie Murdoch.  Indeed, and it was he who spoke first.

“Ye’ll not be wasting all yer time in the north country, Harry,” he said.  “There’s London calling to ye!”

“Aye—­London!” I said, a bit wistfully, I’m thinking.  For me, d’ye ken, a Scots comic, to think o’ London was like an ordinary man thinkin’ o’ takin’ a trip to the North Pole.  “My time’s no come for that, Mac.”

“Maybe no,” said Mac.  “But it will come—­mark my words, Harry.  Ye’ve got what London’ll be as mad to hear as these folk here.  Ye’ve a way wi’ ye, Harry, my wee man!”

‘Deed, and I did believe that mysel’!  It’s hard for a man like me to know what he can do, and say so when the time comes, wi’oot making thoughtless folk think he’s conceited.  An artist’s feeling aboot such things is a curious one, and hard for any but artists to understand.  It’s a grand presumption in a man, if ye look at it in one way, that leads him to think he’s got the right to stand up on a stage and ask a thousand people, or five thousand, to listen to him—­to laugh when he bids them laugh, greet when he would ha’ them sad.

To bid an audience gather, gie up its plans and its pursuits, tak’ an hoor or two of its time—­that’s a muckle thing to ask!  And then to mak’ them pay siller, too, for the chance to hear you!  It’s past belief, almost, how we can do it, in the beginning.  I’m thinking, the noo, how gude a thing it was I did not know, when I first quit the pit and got J. C. MacDonald to send me oot, how much there was for me to learn.  I ken it weel the noo—­I ken how great a chance it was, in yon early days.

But when an artist’s time has come, when he has come to know his audiences, and what they like, and why—­then it is different.  And by this time I was a veteran singer, as you micht say.  I’d sung before all sorts of folk.  They’d been quick enough to let me know the things they didn’t like.  In you days, if a man in a gallery didna like a song or the way I sang it, he’d call oot.  Sometimes he’d get the crowd wi’ him—­sometimes they’d rally to me, and shout him doon.

“Go on, Harry—­sing yer own way—­gang yer ain gait!” I’ve heard encouraging cries like that many and many a time.  But I’ve always learned from those that disapproved o’ me.  They’re quieter the noo.  I ha’ to watch folk, and see, from the way they clap, and the way they look when they’re listening, whether I’m doing richt or wrong.