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24 ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN'
they press themselves forward in swift and kaleidoscopic array. They carry me to "a' the airts the wind can blaw" — to all the ends of the earth. They are peopled by kings and queens and princes and presidents ; by great and famous men and women, by potentates and personalities whose names are as household words wherever the English language is spoken. My head is in a whirl. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all this can actually have happened to me? Surely I must be dreaming. I'll fill my pipe and rest awhile. I feel that I must come back to earth because if I let my mind linger on these visions and these memories I am afraid I shall never get down to the mental state in which I can tell a coherent story of a life which has been full of incident, full of fun, full of amazing experiences, full of striving and planning and earning and saving, but fullest of all, of downright hard work !
I was born in Portobello, a mile or two from Edinburgh, on the fourth of August, 1870. My father, John Lauder, was a potter. He worked in a small pottery in Musselburgh where the principal output was jellyjars and ginger-pop bottles. His father was also John Lauder, a working carpenter, and I well remember him in my childhood's years. He was a big impressive man with a personality which he carried with a good deal of dignity. He was very proud of being a Lauder of Lauderdale, a district of the borders famous in Scottish history, song, and story. The old Lauders, so far as I have been able to make out, must have had some connection with the Bass Rock, that bluff and rocky island that stands sentinel-like at the southern side of the Firth of Forth. Because I can remember my grandfather, perhaps when he had had a glass of beer on a Saturday night, solemnly tapping his chest and telling my father, "Jonn> I'm a Lauder of the Bass ! So are you ! Never forget that you are a Lauder!"
Even as a very small boy I recollect wondering what