Others are doing so, tae.  I’m not the only farmer who’s showing the way back to the land.

I’m telling ye there’s anither thing we must aye be thinkin’ of.  It’s in the country, it’s on the farms, that men are bred.  It’s no in the city that braw, healthy lads and lassies grow up wi’ rosy cheeks and sturdy arms and legs.  They go tae the city frae the land, but their sons and their sons’ sons are no sae strong and hearty—­when there are bairns.  And ye ken, and I ken, that ’tis in the cities that ye’ll see man and wife wi’ e’er a bairn to bless many and many sicca couple, childless, lonely.  Is it the hand o’ God?  Is it because o’ Providence that they’re left sae?

Ye know it is not—­not often.  Ye know they’re traitors to the land that raised them, nourished them.  They’ve taken life as a loan, and treated it as a gift they had the richt to throw awa’ when they were done wi’ the use of it.  And it is no sae!  The life God gives us he gibe’s us to hand on to ithers—­to our children, and through them to generations still to come.  Oh, aye, I’ve heard folk like those I’m thinkin’ of shout loudly o’ their patriotism.  But they’re traitors to their country—­they’re traitors as surely as if they’d helped the Hun in the war we’ve won.  If there’s another war, as God forbid, they’re helping now to lose it who do not do their part in giving Britain new sons and new dochters to carry on the race.

CHAPTER XIV

Tis strange thing enow to become used to it no to hea to count every bawbee before ye spend it.  I ken it weel.  It was after I made my hit in London that things changed sae greatly for me.  I was richt glad.  It was something to know, at last, for sure, that I’d been richt in thinking I had a way wi’ me enow to expect folk to pay their siller in a theatre or a hall to hear me sing.  And then, I began to be fair sure that the wife and the bairn I’d a son to be thinkin’ for by then—­wad ne’er be wanting.

It’s time, I’m thinkin’, for all the folk that’s got a wife and a bairn or twa, and the means to care for them and a’, to be looking wi’ open een and open minds at all the talk there is.  Shall we be changing everything in this world?  Shall a man no ha’ the richt tae leave his siller to his bairn?  Is it no to be o’ use any mair to be lookin’ to the future?

I wonder if the folk that feel so ha’ taken count enow o’ human nature.  It’s a grand thing, human nature, for a’ the dreadfu’ things it leads men tae do at times.  And it’s an awfu’ persistent thing, too.  There was things Adam did that you’ll be doing the day, and me, tae, and thousands like us.  It’s human tae want to be sure o’ whaur the next meal’s coming frae.  And it’s human to be wanting to mak’ siccar that the wife and the bairns will be all richt if a man dees before his time.

And then, we’re a’ used to certain things.  We tak’ them for granted.  We’re sae used to them, they’re sae muckle a part o’ oor lives, that we canna think o’ them as lacking.  And yet—­wadna many o’ them be lost if things were changed so greatly and sae suddenly as those who talk like the Bolsheviki wad be havin’ them?