ad, e'en frae the speculators.

Weel, there's ane thing I've learned in my time on the stage. You
canna treat an audience in any verra special way, just because you're
anxious that it shall like you. You maun just do your best, as you've
been used to doing it. I had this much in my favor--I was singing auld
songs, that I knew weel the way of. And then, tae, many of that
audience knew me. There were a gude few Scots amang it; there were
American friends I'd made on the other side, when they'd been
visiting. And there was another thing I'd no gi'en a thocht, and that
was the way sae many o' them knew ma songs frae havin' heard them on
the gramaphone.

It wasna till after I'd been in America that I made sae many records,
but I'd made enough at lime for some of my songs tae become popular,
and so it wasna quite sicca novelty as I'd thought it micht be for
them to hear me. Oh, aye, what wi' one thing and another it would have
been my ain fault had that audience no liked hearing me sing that
nicht.

But I was fairly overwhelmed by what happened when I'd finished my
first song. The house rose and roared at me. I'd never seen sic a
demonstration. I'd had applause in my time, but nothing like that.
They laughed frae the moment I first waggled my kilt at them, before I
did more than laugh as I came oot to walk aroond. But there were
cheers when I'd done; it was nae just clapping of the hands they gie'd
me. It brought the tears to my een to hear them. And I knew then that
I'd made a whole new countryful of friends that nicht--for after that
I couldna hae doots aboot the way they'd be receiving me elsewhere.

Even sae, the papers surprised me the next morning. They did sae much
more than just praise me! They took me seriously--and that was
something the writers at hame had never done. They saw what I was
aiming at wi' my songs. They understood that I was not just a
comedian, not just a "Scotch comic." I maun amuse an audience wi' my
songs, but unless I mak' them think, and, whiles, greet a bit, too,
I'm no succeeding. There's plenty can sing a comic song as weel as I
can. But that's no just the way I think of all my songs. I try to
interpret character in them. I study queer folk o' all the sorts I see
and know. And, whiles, I think that in ane of my songs I'm doing, on a
wee scale, what a gifted author does in a novel of character.

Aweel, it went straight to my heart, the way those critics wrote about
me. They were not afrai