There’d been a time when it was enow for a man to put on a kilt and a bit o’ plaid and sing his song in anything he thocht was Scottish. There’d been a fair wave o’ such false Scottish comics in the English halls, until everyone was sick and tired o’ ’em. Sae it was the managers all laughed at the idea of anither, and the one or twa faint tries I made to get an engagement in or near London took me nowheres at a’.
Still and a’ I was set upon goin’ to the big village on the Thames before I deed, and I’m an awfu’ determined wee man when ma mind’s well made up. Times I’d whisper a word to a friend in the profession, but they all laughed at me.
“Stick to where they know ye and like ye, Harry,” they said, one and a’. “Why tempt fortune when you’re doin’ so well here?”
It did seem foolish. I was successful now beyond any dreams I had had in the beginning. The days when a salary of thirty five shillings a week had looked enormous made me smile as I looked back upon them. And it would ha’ been a bold manager the noo who’d dared to offer Harry Lauder a guinea to sing twa-three songs of a nicht at a concert.
Had the wife been like maist women, timid and sair afraid that things wad gang wrang, I’d be singing in Scotland yet, I do believe. But she was as bad as me. She was as sure as I was that I couldna fail if ever I got the chance to sing in London.
“There’s the same sort of folks there as here, Harry,” she said. “Folks are the same, here and there, the wide world ower. Tak’ your chance if it comes—ye’ll no be losin’ owt ye’ve got the noo if ye fail. But ye’ll not fail, laddie—I ken that weel.”
Still, resolving to tak’ a chance if it came was not ma way. It’s no man’s way who gets anywheres in this world, I’ve found. There are men who canna e’en do so much—to whom chances come they ha’ neither the wit to see nor the energy to seize upon. Such men one can but pity; they are born wi’ somethin’ lacking in them that a man needs. But there is anither sort, that I do not pity—I despise. They are the men who are always waiting for a chance. They point to this man or to that, and how he seized a chance—or how, perhaps, he failed to do so.
“If ever an opportunity like that comes tae me,” ye’ll hear them say, “just watch me tak’ it! Opportunity’ll ne’er ha’ to knock twice upon my door.”
All well and good. But opportunity is no always oot seekin doors to knock upon. Whiles she’ll be sittin’ hame, snug as a bug in a rug, waitin’ fer callers, her ear cocked for the sound o’ the knock on her door. Whiles the knock comes she’ll lep’ up and open, and that man’s fortune is made frae that day forth. Ye maun e’en go seekin’ opportunity yersel, if so be she’s slow in coming to ye. It’s so at any rate, I’ve always felt. I’ve waited for my chance to come, whiles, but whiles I’ve made the chance mysel’, as well.
It was after the most successful of the tours Mac and I got up together, one of those in Galloway, that I got a week in Birkenhead. Anither artist was ill, and they just wired wad I come? I was free at the time, and glad o’ the siller to be made, for the offer was a gude one, so I just went. That was firther south than I’d been yet; the audiences were English to the backbone wi’ no Scots to speak of amang them.