meal we ate at midday.

'Twas in the pit, I'm thinkin', I made my real start. For 'twas there
I first began to tak' heed of men and see how various they were. Ever
since then, in the days when I began to sing, and when my friends in
the audiences decided that I should spend my life so instead of
working mair with my twa hands, it's been what I knew of men and women
that's been of service to me. When I come upon the idea for a new song
'tis less often a bit of verse or a comic idea I think of first--mair
like it's some odd bit of humanity, some man a wee bit different from
others. He'll be a bit saft, perhaps, or mean, or generous--I'm not
carin', so long as he's but different.

And there, in the pit, men showed themselves to one another, and my
een and my ears were aye open in those days. I'd try to be imitating
this queer character or that, sometimes, but I'd do it only for my ain
pleasure. I was no thinkin', in yon days, of ever singing on the
stage. How should I ha' done so? I was but Harry Lauder, strugglin'
hard to mak siller enough to help at home.

But, whiles I was at my work, I'd sing a bit song now and again, when
I thought no one was by to hear. Sometimes I was wrong, and there's be
one nearer than I thought. And so it got aboot in the pit that I could
sing a bit. I had a good voice enough, though I knew nothing, then, of
how to sing--I've learned much of music since I went on the stage.
Then, though, I was just a boy, singing because he liked to hear
himself sing. I knew few and I'd never seen a bit o' printed music. As
for reading notes on paper I scarcely knew such could be done.

The miners liked to have me sing. It was in the cabin in the brae,