I’m a great one for wearing kilts.  I like the Scottish dress.  It’s the warmest, the maist sensible, way of dressing that I ken.  I used to have mair colds before I took to wearing kilts than ever I’ve had since I made a practice of gie’in up my troosers.  And there’s a freedom aboot a kilt that troosers canna gie ye.

I’ve made many friends in America, but I’m afraid I’ve made some enemies, too.  For there’s a curious trait I’ve found some Americans have.  They’ve an audacity, when they’re the wrang sort, I’ve never seen equalled in any other land.  And they’re clever, tae—­oh, aye—­ they’re as clever as can be!

More folk tried tae sell me things I didna want on that first tour o’ mine.  They’d come tae me wi’ mining stocks, and tell me how I could become rich overnicht.  You’d no be dreaming the ways they’d find of getting a word in my ear.  I mind times when men wha wanted to reach me, but couldna get to me when I was off the stage, hired themselves as stage hands that they micht catch me where I could not get away.

Aye, they’ve reached me in every way.  Selling things, books, insurance, pictures; plain begging, as often as not.  I’ve had men drive cabs so they could speak to me; I mind a time when one, who was to drive me frae the car, in the yards, tae the theatre, took me far oot of ma way, and then turned.

“Now then, Harry Lauder!” he said.  “Give me the thousand dollars!”

“And what thousand dollars wi’ that be, my mannie?” I asked him.

“The thousand I wrote and told you I must have!” he said, as brash as you please.

“Noo, laddie, there’s something wrang,” I said.  “I’ve had nae letter from you aboot that thousand dollars!”

“It’s the mails!” he said, and cursed.  “I’m a fule to trust to them.  They’re always missending letters and delaying them.  Still, there’s no harm done.  I’m telling you now I need a thousand dollars.  Have you that much with you?”

“I dinna carrie sae muckle siller wi’ me, laddie,” I said.  I could see he was but a salt yin, and none to be fearing.  “I’ll gie you a dollar on account.”

And, d’ye ken, he was pleased as Punch?  It was a siller dollar I gie’d him, for it was awa’ oot west this happened, where they dinna have the paper money so much as in the east.

That’s a grand country, that western country in America, whichever side of the line you’re on, in Canada or in the States.  There’s land, and there’s where real men work upon it.  The cities cannot lure them awa’—­not yet, at any rate.  It’s an adventure to work upon one of those great farms.  You’ll see the wheat stretching awa’ further than the een can reach.  Whiles there’ll be a range, and you can see maybe five thousand head o’ cattle that bear a single brand grazing, wi’ the cowboys riding aboot here and there.