e way they're a' like to talk o' me. There's a tale they
tell o' me in America, where they're sae fond o' joking me aboot ma
Scotch closefistedness. They say, yell ken, that I was playing in a
theatre once, and that when the engagement was ended I gie'd
photographs o' masel to all the stage hands picture postcards. I
called them a' together, ye ken, and tauld them I was gratefu' to them
for the way they'd worked wi' me and for me, and wanted to gie 'em
something they could ha' to remember me by.

"Sae here's my picture, laddies," I said, "and when I come again next
year I'll sign them for you."

Weel, noo, that's true enough, nae doot--I've done just that, more
than the ane time. Did I no gie them money, too? I'm no saying did I
or did I no. But ha' I no the richt to crack a joke wi' friends o'
mine like the stage hands I come to ken sae well when I'm in a theatre
for a week's engagement?

I've a song I'm singing the noo. In it I'm an auld Scottish sailor.
I'm pretendin', in the song, that I'm aboot to start on a lang voyage.
And I'm tellin' my friends I'll send them a picture postcard noo and
then frae foreign parts.

"Yell ken fine it's frae me," I tell my friends, "because there'll be
no stamp on the card when it comes tae ye!"

Always the audience roars wi' laughter when I come to that line. I ken
fine they're no laughin' at the wee joke sae much as at what they're
thinkin' o' me and a' they've heard o' my tightness and closeness. Do
they think any Scot wad care for the cost of a stamp? Maybe it would
anger an Englishman did a postcard come tae him wi'oot a stamp. It wad
but amuse a Scot; he'd no be carin' one way or anither for the bawbee
the stamp wad cost. And here's a funny thing tae me. Do they no see
I'm crackin' a joke against masel'? And do they think I'd be doing
that if I were close the way they're thinkin' I am?

Aye, but there's a serious side tae all this talk o' ma being sae
close. D'ye ken hoo many pleas for siller I get each and every day o'
ma life? I could be handin' it out frae morn till nicht! The folk that
come tae me that I've ne'er clapped een upon! The total strangers who
think they've nowt to do but ask me for what they want! Men will ask
me to lend them siller to set themselves up in business. Lassies tell
me in a letter they can be gettin' married if I'll but gie them siller
to buy a trousseau with. Parents ask me to lend them the money to
educate their sons and send them to college