It’s the New Year’s day I’m thinking of, though.  New Year’s is aye a sacred day for a’ us Scots.  When we’re frae hame we dinna lik it; it’s a day we’d fain celebrate under our ain rooftree.  But for me it was mair so than for maist, because it was on New Year’s day I heard o’ my boy’s death.

Weel, it seemed a hard thing tae ha’ the New Year come in whiles I was journeying in a railroad car through the United States.  But here’s the thing that touched me sae greatly.  The time came, and I was alane wi’ the wife.  Tom Vallance had disappeared.  And then I heard the skirl o’ the pipes, and into the car the pipers who travelled wi’ me came marching.  A’ the company that was travelling wi’ me followed them, and they brocht wee presents for me and for the wife.  There were tears in our een, I’m telling you; it was a kindly thought, whoever amang them had it, and ane I’ll ne’er forget.  And there, in that speeding car, we had a New Year’s day celebration that couldna ha’ been matched ootside o’ Scotland.

But, there, I’ve aye found folk kindly and thoughtfu’ tae me when I’ve had tae be awa’ frae hame on sic a day, And it happens often, for it’s just when folk are making holiday that they’ll want maist to see and hear me in their theatres, and sae it’s richt seldom that I can mak’ my way hame for the great days o’ the year.  But I wull, before sae lang—­I’m near ready to keep the promise I’ve made sae often, and retire.  You’re no believing I mean that?  You’ve heard the like of that tale before?  Aye, I ken that fine.  But I mean it!

CHAPTER XIX

I’ve had much leisure to be thinking of late.  A man has time to wonder and to speculate concerning life and what he’s seen o’ it when he’s taking a long ocean voyage.  And I’ve been meditating on some curious contrasts.  I was in Australia when I heard of the coming of the war.  My boy John was with me, then; he’d come there tae meet his mither and me.  He went hame, straight hame; I went to San Francisco.

Noo I’m on ma way hame frae Australia again, and again I’ve made the lang journey by way of San Francisco and the States.  And there’s a muckle to think upon in what I’ve seen.  Sad sichts they were, a many of them.  In yon time when I was there before the world was a’ at peace.  Men went aboot their business, you in Australia, underneath the world, wi’ no thought of trouble brewing.  But other men, in Europe, thousands of miles way, were laying plans that meant death and the loss of hands and een for those braw laddies o’ Australia and New Zealand that I saw—­those we came to ken sae weel as the gallant Anzacs.

It makes you realize, seeing countries so far awa’ frae a’ the war, and yet suffering so there from, how dependent we all are upon one another.  Distance makes no matter; differences make none.  We cannot escape the consequences of what others do.  And so, can we no be thinking sometimes, before we act, doing something that we think concerns only ourselves, of all those who micht suffer for what we did?