Between You and Me | Page 2

for myself and my ain, if I do say it. And that's why, maybe, I've small patience with them that's busy always saying the plain man has no chance these days.
Do you ken how I made my start? Are ye thinkin', maybe, that I'd a faither to send me to college and gie me masters to teach me to sing my songs, and to play the piano? Man, ye'd be wrong, an' ye thought so! My faither deed, puir man, when I was but a bairn of eleven--he was but thirty-twa himself. And my mither was left with me and six other bairns to care for. 'Twas but little schoolin' I had.
After my faither deed I went to work. The law would not let me gie up my schoolin' altogether. But three days a week I learned to read and write and cipher, and the other three I worked in a flax mill in the wee Forfarshire town of Arboath. Do ye ken what I was paid? Twa shillin' the week. That's less than fifty cents in American money. And that was in 1881, thirty eight years ago. I've my bit siller the noo. I've my wee hoose amang the heather at Dunoon. I've my war loan stock, and my Liberty and Victory bonds. But what I've got I've worked for and I've earned, and you've done the same for what you've got, man, and so can any other man if he but wull.
I do not believe God ever intended men to get too rich and prosperous. When they do lots of little things that go to make up the real man have to be left out, or be dropped out. And men think too much of things. For a lang time now things have been riding over men, and mankind has ceased riding over things. But now we plain folk are going again to make things subservient to life, to human life, to the needs and interests of the plain man. That is what I want to talk of always, of late--the need of plain living, plain speaking, plain, useful thinking.
For me the great discovery of the war was that humanity was the greatest thing in the world. I had to learn that no man could live for and by himself alone. I had to learn that I must think all the time of others. A great grief came to me when my son was killed. But I was not able to think and act for myself alone. I was minded to tak' a gun in my hand, and go out to seek to kill twa Huns for my bairn. But it was his mither who stopped me.
"Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord. I will repay." She reminded me of those words. And I was ashamed, for that I had been minded to forget.
And when I would have hidden myself away from a' the world, and nursed my grief, I was reminded, again, that I must not. My boy had died for humanity. He had not been there in France aboot his own affairs. Was it for me, his father, to be selfish when he had been unselfish? Had I done as I planned, had I said I could not carry on because of my ain grief, I should have brought sorrow and trouble to others, and I should have failed to do my duty, since there were those who, in a time of sore trouble and distress, found living easier because I made them laugh and wink back the tears that were too near to dropping.
Oh, aye, I've had my share of trouble. So when I'm tellin' ye this is a bonny world do not be thinkin' it's a man who's lived easily always and whose lines have been cast only in pleasant places who is talking with ye. I've as little patience as any man with those fat, sleek folk who fold their hands and roll their een and speak without knowledge of grief and pain when those who have known both rebel. But I know that God brings help and I know this much more--that he will not bring it to the man who has not begun to try to help himself, and never fails to bring it to the man who has.
Weel, as I've told ye, it was for twa shillin' a week that I first worked. I was a strappin' lout of a boy then, fit to work harder than I did, and earn more, and ever and again I'd tell them at some new mill I was past fourteen, and they'd put me to work at full time. But I could no hide myself awa' from the inspector when he came around, and each time he'd send me back to school and to