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ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' 23
that thus far I have been wandering about the stage looking for a spotlight in which to open my performance.
Yes, here I am, standing on the stage, ready and anxious to begin. But the visions that crowd upon my brain prevent me writing the words that will form, as my spoken words have always done hitherto, the spark of vital and immediate contact between myself and my audience. I see a very humble home in Scotland, a mere "but-and-ben" inhabited by a father and mother and seven young children of whom Harry is the eldest. A short but sturdy fellow of nine or ten years of age. The little household is never far from the line dividing poverty from penury. Father and mother are hard-working, God-fearing folks, honest, independent, but always dreading the hour when disaster and hunger may assail them and their brood of weans. I see the day when the bread-winner is suddenly cut off and the weeping wife and bairns are thrown, penniless, upon the world. I see the oldest of the boys, not yet twelve years of age, working as a half-timer in a flax mill on the east-coast of Scotland. In the evenings, he and his mother toil in the little kitchen from six o'clock till ten tearing old ropes and twine and hawsers into "tow," their four hours' labour bringing them a few much-needed coppers. Later, I see Harry go down the coal-pit in Lanarkshire as a miner's boy, and, kissing his mother good-bye on that first raw November morning, I hear him say, "Mither, Mither, dinna greet! I'll work for you and the wee yins as hard as ever I can !" And again I see the still very youthful miner winning his first prize as a comedian at a village "soiree," and I remember his dreams of a London appearance and the plaudits of the multitude — of fame ! Yes, I can see in my mind's eye that first memorable night in a London music hall when the "wee Scotch comic" held up the "show" for over half an hour and became a stage celebrity in a night. The visions begin to tumble over each other now. There are so many of them;