And yet they’ll come.  I’ve had some of my biggest audiences in such places, and some of my friendliest.  I’ll be sure, whiles I’m singing, that they canna understand.  The English they micht manage, but when I talk a wee bit o’ Scots talk, it’s ayant them altogether.  But they’ll laugh—­they’ll laugh at the way I walk, I suppose, and at the waggle o’ ma kilts.  And they’ll applaud and ask for mair.  I think there’s usually a leaven o’ Scots in sic a audience; just Scots enough so I’ll ha’ a friend or twa before I start.  And after that a’s weel.

It’s a great sicht to see the great crowds gather in a wee place that’s happened to be chosen for a performance or twa because there’s a theatre or a hall that’s big enough.  They’ll come in their motor cars; they’ll come driving in behind a team o’ horses; aye, and there’s some wull come on shanks’ mare.  And it’s a sobering thing tae think they’re a’ coming, a’ those gude folk, tae hear me sing.  You canna do ought but tak’ yourself seriously when they that work sae hard to earn it spend their siller to hear you.

I think it was in America, oot west, where the stock of the pioneers survives to this day, that I began to realize hoo much humanity counted for i’ this world.  Yon’s the land of the plain man and woman, you’ll see.  Folk live well there, but they live simply, and I think they’re closer, there, to living as God meant man tae do, than they are in the cities.  It’s easier to live richtly in the country.  There’s fewer ways to hand to waste time and siller and good intentions.

It was in America I first came sae close to an audience as to hae it up on the stage wi’ me.  When a hoose is sair crowded there they’ll put chairs aroond upon the stage—­mair sae as not to disappoint them as may ha’ made a lang journey tae get in than for the siller that wad be lost were they turned awa’.  And it’s a rare thing for an artist to be able tae see sae close the impression that he’s making.  I’ll pick some old fellow, sometimes, that looks as if nothing could mak’ him laugh.  And I’ll mak’ him the test.  If I canna make him crack a smile before I’m done my heart will be heavy within me, and I’ll think the performance has been a failure.  But it’s seldom indeed that I fail.

There’s a thing happened tae me once in America touched me mair than a’most anything I can ca’ to mind.  It was just two years after my boy John had been killed in France.  It had been a hard thing for me to gae back upon the stage.  I’d been minded to retire then and rest and nurse my grief.  But they’d persuaded me to gae back and finish my engagement wi’ a revue in London.  And then they’d come tae me and talked o’ the value I’d be to the cause o’ the allies in America.