Part 9 (1/2)

Yon were grand days, that I spent touring aboot wi' Mac, singing in concerts. It was an easy going life. The work was light. My audiences were comin' to know me, and to depend on me. I had no need, after a time, to be worrying; we were always sure of a good hoose, wherever we went. But I was no quite content. I was always being eaten, in yon time, wi' a lettle de'il o' ambition, that gnawed at me, and wadna gie me peace.

”Man, Harry,” he'd say, ”I ken weel ye're doin' fine! But, man canna ye do better? Ca' canny, they'll be tellin' ye, but not I! Ye maun do as well as ye can. There's the wife to think of, and the bairn John-- the wee laddie ye and the wife are so prood on!”

It was so, and I knew it. My son John was beginning to be the greatest joy to me. He was so bricht, sae full o' speerit. A likely laddie he was. His mither and I spent many a lang evening dreaming of his future and what micht be coming his way.

”He'll ne'er ha' to work as a laddie as his faither did before him,” I used to say. ”He shall gang to schule wi' the best in the land.”

It was the wife had the grandest dream o' all.

”Could we no send him to the university?” she said. ”I'd gie ma een teeth, Harry, to see him at Cambridge!”

I laughed at her, but it was with a twist in the corners o' ma mooth.

There was money coming in regular by then, and there was siller piling up in the bank. I'd nowt to think of but the wee laddie, and there was time enow before it would be richt to be sending him off--time enow for me to earn as muckle siller as he micht need. Why should he no be a gentleman? His blood was gude on both sides, frae his mither and frae me. And, oh, I wish ye could ha' seen the bonnie laddie as his mither and I did! Ye'd ken, then, hoo it was I came to be sae ambitious that I paid no heed to them that thocht it next door to sinfu' for me to be aye thinkin' o' doing even better than I was!

There were plenty like that, ye'll ken. Some was a wee bit jealous.

Some, who'd known me my life lang, couldna believe I could hope to do the things it was in my heart and mind to try. They believed they were giving me gude advice when they bade me be content and not tempt providence.

”Man, Harry, listen to me,” said one old friend. ”Ye've done fine.

Ye're a braw laddie, and we're all prood o' ye the noo. Don't seek to be what ye can never be. Ye'll stand to lose all ye've got if ye let pride rule ye.”

I never whispered my real ambition to anyone in yon days--saving the wife, and Mackenzie Murdoch. Indeed, and it was he who spoke first.

”Ye'll not be wasting all yer time in the north country, Harry,” he said. ”There's London calling to ye!”

”Aye--London!” I said, a bit wistfully, I'm thinking. For me, d'ye ken, a Scots comic, to think o' London was like an ordinary man thinkin' o' takin' a trip to the North Pole. ”My time's no come for that, Mac.”

”Maybe no,” said Mac. ”But it will come--mark my words, Harry. Ye've got what London'll be as mad to hear as these folk here. Ye've a way wi' ye, Harry, my wee man!”

'Deed, and I did believe that mysel'! It's hard for a man like me to know what he can do, and say so when the time comes, wi'oot making thoughtless folk think he's conceited. An artist's feeling aboot such things is a curious one, and hard for any but artists to understand.

It's a grand presumption in a man, if ye look at it in one way, that leads him to think he's got the right to stand up on a stage and ask a thousand people, or five thousand, to listen to him--to laugh when he bids them laugh, greet when he would ha' them sad.

To bid an audience gather, gie up its plans and its pursuits, tak' an hoor or two of its time--that's a muckle thing to ask! And then to mak' them pay siller, too, for the chance to hear you! It's past belief, almost, how we can do it, in the beginning. I'm thinking, the noo, how gude a thing it was I did not know, when I first quit the pit and got J. C. MacDonald to send me oot, how much there was for me to learn. I ken it weel the noo--I ken how great a chance it was, in yon early days.

But when an artist's time has come, when he has come to know his audiences, and what they like, and why--then it is different. And by this time I was a veteran singer, as you micht say. I'd sung before all sorts of folk. They'd been quick enough to let me know the things they didn't like. In you days, if a man in a gallery didna like a song or the way I sang it, he'd call oot. Sometimes he'd get the crowd wi'

him--sometimes they'd rally to me, and shout him doon.

”Go on, Harry--sing yer own way--gang yer ain gait!” I've heard encouraging cries like that many and many a time. But I've always learned from those that disapproved o' me. They're quieter the noo. I ha' to watch folk, and see, from the way they clap, and the way they look when they're listening, whether I'm doing richt or wrong.

It's a digression, maybe, but I micht tell ye hoo a new song gets into my list. I must add a new song every sae often, ye ken. An' I ha'

always a dozen or mair ready to try. I help in the writing o' my ain songs, most often, and so I ken it frae the first. It's changed and changed, both in words and music, over and over again. Then, when I think it's finished, I begin to sing it to mysel'. I'll sing while I'm shaving, when I tak' my bath, as I wander aboot the hoose or sit still in a railway train. I try all sorts of different little tricks, shadings o' my voice, degrees of expression.

Sometimes a whole line maun be changed so as to get the right sort o'

sound. It makes all the difference in the world if I can sing a long ”oh” sound, sometimes, instead o' a clippit e or a short a. To be able to stand still, wi' ma moth open, big enow for a bird to fly in, will mak' an audience laugh o' itself.

Anyway, it's so I do wi' a new song. I'll ha' sung it maybe twa-three thousand times before ever I call it ready to try wi' an audience. And even then I'm just beginning to work on it. Until I know how the folk in front tak' it I can't be sure. It may strike them in a way quite different from my idea o' hoo it would. Then it may be I'll ha' to change ma business. My audiences always collaborate wi' me in my new songs--and in my old ones, too, bless 'em. Only they don't know it, and they don't realize how I'm cheating them by making them pay to hear me and then do a deal o' my work for me as well.

It's a great trick to get an audience to singing a chorus wi' ye. Not in Britain--it's no difficult there, or in a colony where there are many Britons in the hoose. But in America I must ha' been one o' the first to get an audience to singing. American audiences are the friendliest in the world, and the most liberal wi' applause ye could want to find. But they've always been a bit shy aboot singin' wi ye.

They feel it's for ye to do that by yer lane.

But I've won them aroond noo, and they help me more than they ken.