We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
272 ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN'
While at Rangoon I had a cordial invitation to visit the palace of Ling Sing, a Chinese gentleman who is known all over India as the Sugar King. He has many other business interests and is reputed to be one of the richest Chinamen in the world. Judging by his home on the outskirts of Rangoon I can easily believe it. It is the last word in Eastern opulence. Mr. Ling Sing — I sincerely hope I am spelling his name correctly — completely knocked the wind out of my sails when I was introduced to him by breaking out with, "Man, Harry, it's a braw, bricht moonlicht nicht, the nicht, is it no? Hooch, aye!" He spoke the Scottish dialect like a native of Stirling. I am not readily "stumped" but I confess that on this occasion I stood and stared "like ony gumph" scarcely crediting the evidence of my ears. Thoroughly enjoying my discomfiture Ling Sing started to laugh and added further to my bewilderment by remarking, "Say, Harry, ma cock, hoo wad ye like me to gie ye a blaw on the pipes — The seventy-ninth's Farewell' or 'The Haughs o' Cromdale'?" And without further ado he proceeded to seize a set of bagpipes from a table in the corner of the room and "tune up."
I was spell-bound. Sure enough this extraordinary Chinaman started to play the famous air he had first mentioned. Not only so but he began the "waggle walk" of the real Scottish piper. What could I do but jump in behind him and march round, chest expanded, eye flashing, and droning out the melody familiar to me since childhood? Afterwards Ling Sing explained the apparently insoluble mystery. He was not a MacDonald posing as a Chinaman but a genuine native of the Flowery Land. But his father, the original Sugar King, had always had a great admiration for Scots people and when Ling was yet a little boy he was sent to Dollar Academy, in Clackmannanshire, where he remained for several years and absorbed the customs, the language, and the characteristics of his schoolmates so