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ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' 87.
ately available there was always the local policeman willing to oblige with a list of likely domiciles. My plan was to let all the others have "first cut" at this list ; whatever was left I calculated would be cheapest ! And during all the fourteen weeks of that early tour I seldom paid more than a shilling for my bed. Occasionally I had to go the length of eighteenpence but against this extravagance I frequently got shelter for ninepence and sometimes as low as sixpence. All meals were, of course, extra. But after a week or two on the road I discovered that it was a paying plan to make a bargain for bed and breakfast inclusive. I didn't mind, I would explain to the lady of the house, paying as much as i/6d for a good bed and a decent breakfast ! Sometimes the door was shut in my face. As often as not I screwed the landlady down to a shilling or one and threepence — all in !
Let me admit right off that I slept in some quaint houses and many queer beds. Only a few weeks ago when I was playing at the Victoria Palace, London, I got a letter from a young man now an officer in the Royal Navy asking me, among other things, if I remembered the night I slept with his father in Troon, Ayrshire. For a long while I couldn't make out what the letter referred to but the strings of memory gradually loosened and I began to remember the incident which the writer recalled. Thirty-five years ago I had gone to his mother and asked for a night's lodging. She explained that her house was full of Glasgow holidaymakers and that there wasn't a spare bed in the place. But if I cared to sleep with her husband while she "crept in aside the twa weans,'' I could do so and welcome. Of course I did. The boy who wrote me the letter was not then born but the fact that Harry Lauder had spent a night in their house had become a family tradition. The sailor son was home from Australia and, hearing me sing at the Victoria Palace, he had written asking if I could verify the story. I wrote back and assured him that I had had an excellent