Between You and Me | Page 4

save the lives of men like

those who were digging it out of the ground. They were thinkin', there,
in yon days, that men could live for themselves and by themselves.
But, thank God, it was only a few who thought so. The great lot of the
men were sound, and they did grand work. And they found their reward,
too--as men always do when they do their work well and think of what
it means.
There were others in Butte, too, who were thinking only of themselves.
Some of them hung one of the agitators, whiles before I was there.
They had not thought, any more than had the foolish men among the
workers, how each of us is dependent upon others, of the debts that
every day brings us, that we owe to all humanity.
Ye'll e'en forgie me if I wander so, sometimes, in this book? Ye'll ken
how it is when you'll be talkin' with a friend? Ye'll begin about the bit
land or the cow one of you means to sell to the other. Ye'll ha' promised
the wife, maybe, when ye slipped oot, that ye'd come richt back, so
soon as ye had finished wi' Sandy. And then, after ye'd sat ye doon
together in a corner of the bar, why one bit word would lead to another,
and ye'd be wanderin' from the subject afore ye knew it? It's so wi' me.
I'm no writin' a book so much as I'm sittin' doon wi' ye all for a chat, as
I micht do gi'en you came into my dressing room some nicht when I
was singin' in your toon.
It's a far cry that last bit o' wandering meant--from Hamilton in my ain
Scotland to Butte in the Rocky Mountains of America! And yet, for
what I'm thinkin' it's no so far a cry. There were men I knew in
Hamilton who'd have found themselves richt at hame among the
agitators in Butte. I'm minded to be tellin' ye a tale of one such lad.

CHAPTER II
The lad I've in mind I'll call Andy McTavish, which'll no be his richt
name, ye'll ken. He could ha' been the best miner in the pit. He could
ha' been the best liked lad in a' those parts. But he was not. Nothin' was

ever good enough for Andy. I'm tellin' ye, had he found a golden
sovereign along the road, whiles he went to his work, he'd have come
to us at the pit moanin' and complainin' because it was not a five pound
note he'd turned up with his toe!
Never was Andy satisfied. Gi'en there were thirty shillin' for him to
draw at the pit head, come Saturday night, he'd growl that for the hard
work he'd done he should ha' had thirty-five. Mind ye, I'm not sayin' he
was wrong, only he was no worse off than the rest, and better than
some, and he was always feeling that it was he who was badly used,
just he, not everyone. He'd curse the gaffer if the vein of coal he had to
work on wasn't to his liking; he knew nothing of the secret of happiness,
which is to take what comes and always remember that for every bit of
bad there's nearly always a bit o' good waitin' around the corner.
Yet, with it all, there wasn't a keener, brighter lad than Andy in all
Lanarkshire. He had always a good story to crack. He was handy with
his fists; he could play well at football or any other game he tried. He
wasn't educated; had he been, we all used to think, he micht ha' made a
name for himself. I didn't see, in those days, that we were all wrong. If
Andy'd been a good miner, if he'd started by doing well, at least, as
well as he could, the thing he had the chance to do, then we'd have been
right to think that all he needed to be famous and successful was to
have the chance.
But, as it was, Andy was always too busy greetin' over his bad luck. It
was bad luck that he had to work below ground, when he loved the
sunshine. It was bad luck that the wee toon was sae dull for a man of
his spirit. Andy seemed to think that some one should come around and
make him happy and comfortable and rich--not that the only soul alive
to whom he had a right to look for such blessings was himself.
I'll no say we weren't liking Andy all richt. But, ye ken, he was that sort
of man we'd always say, when we were talking of him: "Oh, aye--
there's Andy. A braw laddie--but what he micht be!"