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ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' 173
in England. Often I had to pay sweetly for the privilege of postponing some of my bookings. Tom and Foster generally carried through these negotiations between them and that combination of Scot and Jew achieved marvellous results even in cases where I had sorrowfully made up my mind that parleying was useless. While Tom put over the rough stuff — and no man ever had a servant so absolutely devoted to his master's interests as I have had in Tom Vallance — Foster provided the oil of suavity — the "smoosh." Naturally the British managers hated to have any of their Lauder dates interfered with but most of them had begun to realize that it was better to have me for a friend than an enemy and so they made possible for me my now yearly trips to America. Not only so but the more discerning of them actually agreed to substantial increases of salary when I did fill in dates for them. A few days ago I met my old friend Sir Walter de Freece at a dinner in London and he was reminding me of an incident in this connection which made me laugh very heartily.
"Don't you remember, Harry," he said, "coming up to my office one day with a hank of red flannel round your neck and coughing as if the tomb was waiting for you? You wanted to postpone certain engagements in the Midlands which you had with my firm so that you could get away to America sooner than you otherwise would have done. There were two weeks' bookings in between my dates and I asked you what you were going to do about them. 'Oh, I can't postpone these,' you replied. Tm getting twice the money there that you're paying me/ And don't you remember how your cough vanished immediately when I began to speak about doubling your contract-price?" Sir Walter's story was not strictly true but there was enough accuracy in it to make me chuckle and offer to buy him a drink — of lemonade.
In the New Year season of 191 on, I played another