Roamin’ in the gloamin’ (1928)

CHAPTER TWELVE "GREAT ARTISTE CAPTIVATES AMERICA" I set sail from Liverpool on the old Lucania in the middle of October 1907. Nance did not feel any too good in health at that time and cried off the trip. Tom, my inseparable henchman and companion, was ill with rheumatic fever in London and could not accompany me. So I took my son John, then a boy of sixteen and due to go up to Cambridge in a month or two. He had been over the water to Canada with his mother a year before; he was by way of being an old sailor and knew the ropes. Poor John ! I can scarcely bear to think about that trip with him and the fine times we had together on board. He was very young but he was very wise and among his other accomplishments he could play the piano beautifully and sing a good sentimental song. What a favourite he was with the passengers ! Little did he or I dream then of a world war which was to bring desolation and unending sorrow into our home and into millions of others. How glad I am now that I took him with me on that first American trip ! It was the longest time we had ever been together ; we only got to know each other properly during that two months' holiday. Remembering always my first trip across the Atlantic with my dear boy John I never miss a chance of telling parents who are blessed with boys and girls to spend all the time they can with them when the bairns are young because if they don't do so then, they will be missing one of the purest joys of life in what Burns describes as "this melancholy vale." As the ship drew nearer and nearer to New York I became quite nervous. I was about to launch another Scots 141