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20 ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMINT
I dashed up the steps, two at a time, took up a good position at the rail and started to yell to my old crony, Colonel Walter Scott, "Here's tae us, Wattie! Wha's like us? Deil a yin ! ! See ye again next year !"
Me retire ! How do the people that ask me the question know that I have made enough money to retire on? Do they not stop to think that if I retired I would have to spend a lot of money without earning any? And that such a prospect, if all the tales about Harry Lauder be true, would be altogether too dreadful for him to contemplate?
I will go the length of admitting that I have been seriously considering the cutting down of my annual farewell tours ! These have been going on for quite a number of years now but the people at home and in America and Australia and South Africa and New Zealand continue to give me so much encouragement — and this is one of those words that can be written either in letters or figures ! — that I sometimes think I will just carry on "to the end of the road." One of these days, however, I'm afraid Til be writing a letter to Will Morris in New York, or Sir Alfred Butt in London, or the Tait Brothers in Melbourne, or dear old Ted Carroll anywhere, saying that I won't be leaving Dunoon and the heather hills o' Scotland for any more professional engagements. Perhaps ! On the other hand — perhaps not ! !
Honestly why should I retire? I like my work. I am happiest when on the stage — I mean by that that my whole heart is in my job. I never tire of it. If I lie off for a few weeks, as I shall have to do occasionally now if I am to write this book of my life and wanderings, I gradually get more and more restless and the only thing that pulls me together is to know that I "open" at such-and-such a place on suchand-such a date. Never a day elapses either when I am at home or "on tour" but I spend some hours of it singing and lilting and humming and strumming. And it has been the same with me for fifty years. In the mill, in the mine, in