It’s as if a man waur sair distressed because his toon was a dirty toon.  He’d be thinking of hoo it must look when strangers came riding through it in their motor cars.  And he’d aye be talking of what a bad toon it was he dwelt in; how shiftless, how untidy.  And a’ the time, mind you, his ain front yard would be full o’ weeds, and the grass no cut, and papers and litter o’ a’ sorts aboot.

Weel, is it no better for that man to clean his ain front yard first?  Then there’ll be aye ane gude spot for strangers to see.  And there’ll be the example for his neighbors, too.  They’ll be wanting their places to look as well as his, once they’ve seen his sae neat and tidy.  And then, when they’ve begun tae go to work in sic a fashion, soon the whole toon will begin to want to look weel, and the streets will look as fine as the front yards.

When I hear an agitator, a man who’s preaching against all things as they are, I’m always afu’ curious aboot that man.  Has he a wife?  Has he bairns o’ his ain?  And, if he has, hoo does he treat them?

There’s men, you know, who’ll gang up and doon the land talkin’ o’ humanity.  But they’ll no be kind to the wife, and their weans will run and hide awa’ when they come home.  There’s many a man has keen een for the mote in his neighbor’s eye who canna see the beam in his own—­ that’s as true to-day as when it was said first twa thousand years agane.

I ken fine there’s folk do no like me.  I’ve stood up and talked to them, from the stage, and I’ve heard say that Harry Lauder should stick to being a comic, and not try to preach.  Aye, I’m no preacher, and fine I ken it.  And it’s no preaching I try to do; I wish you’d a’ understand that.  I’m only saying, whiles I’m talking so, what I’ve seen and what I think.  I’m but one plain man who talks to others like him.

“Harry,” I’ve had them say to me, in wee toons in America, “ca’ canny here.  There’s a muckle o’ folk of German blood.  Ye’ll be hurtin’ their feelings if you do not gang easy——­”

It was a lee!  I ne’er hurt the feelings o’ a man o’ German blood that was a decent body—­and there were many and many o’ them.  There in America the many had to suffer for the sins of the few.  I’ve had Germans come tae me wi’ tears in their een and thank me for the way I talked and the way I was helping to win the war.  They were the true Germans, the ones who’d left their native land because they cauldna endure the Hun any more than could the rest of the world when it came to know him.

But I couldna ha gone easy, had I known that I maun lose the support of thousands of folk for what I said.  The truth as I’d seen it and knew it I had to tell.  I’ve a muckle to say on that score.

CHAPTER XV

It was as great a surprise tae me as it could ha’ been to anyone else when I discovered that I could move men and women by speakin’ tae them.  In the beginning, in Britain, I made speeches to help the recruiting.  My boy John had gone frae the first, and through him I knew much about the army life, and the way of it in those days.  Sae I began to mak’ a bit speech, sometimes, after the show.