There’s no way better calculated to get a crowd aboot than to be hurryin’ through the streets o’ London in a motor car and ha’ a breakdoon!  I’ve been lucky as to that; I’ve ne’er been held up more than ten minutes by such trouble, but it always makes me nervous when onything o’ the sort happens.  I mind one time I was hurrying from the Tivoli to a hall in the suburbs, and on the Thames Embankment something went wrang.

I was worried for fear I’d be late, and I jumped oot to see what was wrang.  I clean forgot I was in the costume for my first song at the new hall—­it had been my last, tae, at the Tiv.  I was wearin’ kilt, glengarry, and all the costume for the swab germ’ corporal o’ Hielanders in “She’s Ma Daisy.”  D’ye mind the song?  Then ye’ll ken hoo I lookit, oot there on the Embankment, wi’ the lichts shinin’ doon on me and a’, and me dancin’ aroond in a fever o’ impatience to be off!

At once a crowd was aroond me—­where those London crowds spring frae I’ve ne’er been able to guess.  Ye’ll be bowlin’ alang a dark, empty street.  Ye stop—­and in a second they’re all aboot ye.  Sae it was that nicht, and in no time they were all singin’, if ye please!  They sang the choruses of my songs—­each man, seemingly, picking a different yin!  Aye, it was comical—­so comical it took my mind frae the delay.

CHAPTER XII

I was crackin’ yin or twa the noo aboot them that touch ye for a bawbee noo and then.  I ken fine the way folks talk o’ me and say I’m close fisted.  Maybe I am a’ that.  I’m a Scot, ye ken, and the Scots are a close fisted people.  I’m no sayin’ yet whether yon’s a fault or a virtue.  I’d fain be talkin’ a wee bit wi’ ye aboot it first.

There’s aye ither things they’re fond o’ saying aboot a Scot.  Oh, aye, I’ve heard folk say that there was but the ane way to mak’ a Scot see a joke, an’ that was to bore a hole in his head first.  They’re sayin’ the Scots are a folk wi’oot a sense o’ humor.  It may be so, but ye’ll no be makin’ me think so—­not after all these years when they’ve been laughin’ at me.  Conceited, is that?  Weel, ha’ it yer ane way.

We Scots ha’ aye lived in a bonny land, but a land that made us work hard for what it gie’d us.  It was no smiling, easy going southern country like some.  It was no land where it was easy to mak’ a living, wi’ bread growing on one tree, and milk in a cocoanut on another, and fruits and berries enow on all sides to keep life in the body of ye, whether ye worked or no.

There’s no great wealth in Scotland.  Her greatest riches are her braw sons and daughters, the Scots folk who’ve gone o’er a’ the world.  The land is full o’ rocks and hills.  The man who’d win a crop o’ rye or oats maun e’en work for the same.  And what a man works hard for he’s like to value more than what comes easy to his hand.  Sae it’s aye been with the Scots, I’m thinking.  We’ve had little, we Scottish folk, that’s no cost us sweat and labor, o’ one sort or anither.  We’ve had to help ourselves, syne there was no one else had the time to gie us help.