ane nicht in New York!

That was a grand occasion, I'm tellin' ye. It was in the Metropolitan
Opera Hoose, that great theatre where Caruso and Melba and a' the
stars of the opera ha' sung sae often. Aye, Harry Lauder had sung
there tae--sung there that nicht! The hoose was fu', and I made my
talk.

And then I held up my book, "A Minstrel in France." I asked that they
should buy a copy. The bidding started low. But up and up it ran. And
when I knocked it doon at last it was for twenty-five hundred dollars
--five hundred poonds! But that wasna a'. I was weel content. But the
gentleman that bocht it lookit at it, and then sent it back, and tauld
me to auction it all ower again. I did, and this time, again, it went
for twenty-five hundred dollars. So there was five thousand dollars--a
thousand poonds--for ma wounded laddies at hame in Scotland.

Noo, think o' the contrast. There's a toon--I'll no be writing doon
its name--where they wadna bid but twelve dollars--aboot twa poond ten
shillings--for the book! Could ye blame me for being vexed? Maybe I
said more than I should, but I dinna think so. I'm thinking still
those folk were mean. But I was interested enough to look to see what
that toon had done, later, and I found oot that its patriotism must
ha' been awakened soon after, for it bocht its share and more o'
bonds, and it gave its siller freely to all the bodies that needed
money for war work. They were sair angry at old Harry Lauder that
nicht he tauld them what he thocht of their generosity, but it maybe
he did them gude, for a' that!

I'd be a dead man the noo, e'en had I as many lives as a dozen nine
lived cats, had a' the threats that were made against me in America
been carried oot. They'd tell me, in one toon after anither, that it
wadna be safe tae mak' ma talk against the Hun. But I was never
frightened. You know the old saying that threatened men live longest,
and I'm a believer in that. And, as it was, the towns where there were
most people of German blood were most cordial to me.

I ken fine how it was that that was so. All Germans are not Huns. And
in America the decent Germans, the ones who were as filled with horror
when the Lusitania was sunk as were any other decent bodies, were
anxious to do all they could to show that they stood with the land of
their adoption.

I visited many an American army camp. I've sung for the American
soldiers, as well as the British, in America, and in France as well.