ut, dear, dear, 'tis no but a hint o' the glamour and the
freshness and the beauty o' the country that ma songs can carry to
them. No but a hint! Ye canna bottle the light o' the moon on Afton
Water; ye canna bring the air o' a Hieland moor to London in a box.

Will ye no seek to be oot sae much o' the year as ye can? It may be
true that your affairs maun keep you living in the city. But whiles ye
can get oot in the free air. Ye can lee doon upon yer back on the turf
and look up at the blue sky and the bricht sun, and hear the skylark
singing high above ye, or the call o' the auld hoot owl at nicht.

I think it's the evenings, when I'm held a prisoner in the city, mak'
me lang maist for the country. There's a joy to a country evening.
Whiles it's winter. But within it's snug. There's the wind howling
doon the chimney, but there's the fire blazing upon the hearth, and
the kettle singing it's bit sang on the hob. And all the family will
be in frae work, tired but happy. Some one wull start a sang to rival
the kettle; we've a poet in Scotland. 'Twas the way ma mither wad sing
the sangs o' Bobby Burns made me sure, when I was a bit laddie, that I
must, if God was gude tae me, do what I could to carry on the work o'
that great poet.

There's plenty o' folk who like the country for rest and recreation.
But they canna understand hoo it comes that folk are willing to stay
there all their days and do the "dull country work." Aye, but it's no
sae dull, that work in the country. There's less monotony in it, in ma
een, than in the life o' the clerk or the shopkeeper, doing the same
thing, day after day, year after year. I' the country they're
producing--they're making food and ither things yon city dweller maun
ha'.

It's the land, when a's said a's done, that feeds us and sustains us;
clothes us and keeps us. It's the countryman, wi' his plough, to whom
the city liver owes his food. We in Britain had a sair lesson in the
war. Were the Germans no near bein' able to starve us oot and win the
war wi' their submarines, And shouldna Britain ha' been able, as she
was once, to feed hersel' frae her ain soil?

I'm thinking often, in these days, of hoo the soldiers must be feeling
who are back frae France and the years i' the trenches. They've lived
great lives, those o' them that ha' lived through it. Do ye think
they'll be ready tae gang back to what they were before they dropped
their pens or their tape measures and went to war to