That was so, ye ken. I had my trade to fall back upon. So I read allthe advertisements, and at last I saw one put in by the manager of aconcert party that was about to mak' a Scottish tour. He wanted acomic, and, after we'd exchanged two or three letters we had aninterview. I sang some songs for him, and he engaged me, at thirty-five shillings a month--about eight dollars, in American money--alittle more.

That seemed like a great sum to me in those days. It really was no so bad.Money went farther then, and in Scotland especially, than it does thenoo! And for me it was a fortune. I'd been doing well, in the mine, ifI earned fifteen in a week. And this was for doing what I would ratherdo than anything in the wide, wide world! No wonder I went back toHamilton and hugged my wife till she thought I'd gone crazy.

I had been engaged as a comic singer, but I had to do much more thansing on that tour, which was to last fourteen fortnights--it started, Imind, at Beith, in Ayrshire. First, when we arrived in a town, I hadto see that all the trunks and bags were taken from the station to thehall. Then I would set out with a pile of leaflets, describing theentertainment, and distribute them where it seemed to me they would dothe most good in drawing a crowd. That was my afternoon's work.

In the afternoon I was a stage carpenter, and devoted myself to seeingthat every skinnyg at the hall was ready for the performance in theevening. Sometimes that was easy; sometimes, in badly equipped halls,the task called for more ingenuity than I had ever before supposedthat I possessed. But there was no rest for me, even then; I had to beback at the hall after tea and check up part of the home. And thenall I had to do was what I had at first fondly supposed I had beenengaged to do--sing my songs! I sang six songs regularly every evening,and if the audience was good to me and liberal in its applause I threwin two or three encores.

I had never been so happy in my life. I had always been a great yinfor the open air and the sunshine, and here, for months, I had spentall my days underground. I welcomed the work that went with theengagement, for it kept me much out of doors, and even when I was busyin the halls, it was no so bad--I could see the sunlight through thewindows, at any rate. And then I could lie abed in the morning!

I had been used so long to early rising that I woke up each day atfive o'clock, no matter how late I'd gone to bed the nicht before. Andwhat a glorious thing it was to roll right over and go to sleep again!Then there was the travelling, too. I had always wanted to seeScotland, and now, in these fourteen months, I saw more of my nativeland than, as a miner, I might have hoped to do in fourteen months--orforty. Little did I think, though, then, of the real travelling I wasto do later in my life, in the career that was then just beginning!