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ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' 169
Often I would nervously ask Will if he thought the Lauder vogue would last in the States.
"Last, Harry !" he would exclaim, "Why, we have only started to scratch the soiface; we ain't got down to the real gold-vein yet. We'll be diggers for ten years to come!" Saying which Will would show his white teeth and blink his eyes so rapidly that you couldn't tell the colour of them !
While the native Americans certainly rolled up in their thousands, encouraged to do so by the extraordinarily kind criticisms of my performances which constantly appeared in the newspapers, there is no doubt in my mind that the exiled Scots in the States had more to do with my success than many people imagined. We are easily the most "clannish" race in the world. We love each other even if we don't trust each other. Wherever we scatter ourselves over the Seven Seas we seem to smell each other out and gravitate as surely as Newton's law operates. Let one Scot be attacked in a wilderness or on a cannibal island and another will pop up from nowhere to his rescue. Put a Scot in the Mayor's chair of any city in the world and he'll have to spend more than half his time finding jobs for people from his own home town. Rustle a bag of money anywhere and the Scot will beat the Jew to it every time. The expatriated Caledonians sure rallied to my support during my earlier trips to Dollar Land. Not only so, they turned up at my shows in all manner of Scottish costumes — in kilts, with Balmoral bonnets, wearing tartan ties, and many of them brought their bagpipes with them. They imparted an enthusiastic atmosphere to my appearances everywhere; their weird shouts and "hoochs" and skirls provided good copy for the journalists and next-day talking points for the natives. In the first twenty weeks I spent in the States I must have met personally ten thousand people who claimed acquaintance with me in "the auld days in Hamilton, Harry!"— or Glasgow, or Arbroath, or Portobello, as the case might be. I