The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Minstrel In France, by Harry Lauder

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Title: A Minstrel In France

Author: Harry Lauder

Release Date: February 21, 2004 [EBook #11211]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MINSTREL IN FRANCE ***

Produced by Geoff Palmer

A MINSTREL IN FRANCE

BY

HARRY LAUDER

[ILLUSTRATION: frontispiece Harry Lauder and his son, Captain John
Lauder. (see Lauder01.jpg)]

TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED SON CAPTAIN JOHN LAUDER

First 8th, Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders
Killed in France, December 28, 1916

Oh, there's sometimes I am lonely
And I'm weary a' the day
To see the face and clasp the hand
Of him who is away.
The only one God gave me,
My one and only joy,
My life and love were centered on
My one and only boy.

I saw him in his infant days
Grow up from year to year,
That he would some day be a man
I never had a fear.
His mother watched his every step,
'Twas our united joy
To think that he might be one day
My one and only boy.

When war broke out he buckled on
His sword, and said, "Good-bye.
For I must do my duty, Dad;
Tell Mother not to cry,
Tell her that I'll come back again."
What happiness and joy!
But no, he died for Liberty,
My one and only boy.

The days are long, the nights are drear,
The anguish breaks my heart,
But oh! I'm proud my one and only
Laddie played his part.
For God knows best, His will be done,
His grace does me employ.
I do believe I'll meet again
My one and only boy.

by Harry Lauder

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Harry Lauder and His Son, Captain John Lauder

"I did not stop at sending out my recruiting band. I went out myself"

"'Carry On!' were the last words of my boy, Captain John Lauder, to his men, but he would mean them for me, too"

"Bang! Went Sixpence"

"Harry Lauder preserves the bonnet of his son, brought to him from where the lad fell, 'The memory of his boy, it is almost his religion.'—A tatter of plaid of the Black Watch. on a wire of a German entanglement barely suggests the hell the Scotch troops have gone through"

"Captain John Lauder and Comrades Before the Trenches in France"

"Make us laugh again, Harry!' Though I remember my son and want to join the ranks, I have obeyed"

"Harry Lauder, 'Laird of Dunoon.'"
—Medal struck off by Germany when Lusitania was sunk"

CHAPTER I

Yon days! Yon palmy, peaceful days! I go back to them, and they are as a dream. I go back to them again and again, and live them over. Yon days of another age, the age of peace, when no man dared even to dream of such times as have come upon us.

It was in November of 1913, and I was setting forth upon a great journey, that was to take me to the other side of the world before I came back again to my wee hoose amang the heather at Dunoon. My wife was going with me, and my brother-in-law, Tom Valiance, for they go everywhere with me. But my son John was coming with us only to Glasgow, and then, when we set out for Liverpool and the steamer that was to bring us to America he was to go back to Cambridge. He was near done there, the bonnie laddie. He had taken his degree as Bachelor of Arts, and was to set out soon upon a trip around the world.

Was that no a fine plan I had made for my son? That great voyage he was to have, to see the world and all its peoples! It was proud I was that I could give it to him. He was—but it may be I'll tell you more of John later in this book!

My pen runs awa' with me, and my tongue, too, when I think of my boy
John.

We came to the pier at Dunoon, and there she lay, the little ferry steamer, the black smoke curling from her stack straight up to God. Ah, the braw day it was! There was a frosty sheen upon the heather, and the Clyde was calm as glass. The tops of the hills were coated with snow, and they stood out against the horizon like great big sugar loaves.

We were a' happy that day! There was a crowd to see us off. They had come to bid me farewell and godspeed, all my friends and my relations, and I went among them, shaking them by the hand and thinking of the long whiles before I'd be seeing them again. And then all my goodbys were said, and we went aboard, and my voyage had begun.

I looked back at the hills and the heather, and I thought of all I was to do and see before I saw those hills again. I was going half way round the world and back again. I was going to wonderful places to see wonderful things and curious faces. But oftenest the thought came to me, as I looked at my son, that him I would see again before I saw the heather and the hills and all the friends and the relations I was leaving behind me. For on his trip around the world he was to meet us in Australia! It was easier to leave him, easier to set out, knowing that, thinking of that!

Wonderful places I went to, surely. And wonderful things I saw and heard. But the most wonderful thing of all that I was to see or hear upon that voyage I did not dream of nor foresee. How was a mortal man to foresee? How was he to dream of it?

Could I guess that the very next time I set out from Dunoon pier the peaceful Clyde would be dotted with patrol boats, dashing hither and thither! Could I guess that everywhere there would be boys in khaki, and women weeping, and that my boy, John——! Ah, but I'll not tell you of that now.

Peaceful the Clyde had been, and peaceful was the Mersey when we sailed from Liverpool for New York. I look back on yon voyage—the last I took that way in days of peace. Next time! Destroyers to guard us from the Hun and his submarines, and to lay us a safe course through the mines. And sailor boys, about their guns, watching, sweeping the sea every minute for the flash of a sneaking pirate's periscope showing for a second above a wave!

But then! It was a quiet trip, with none but the ups and doons of every Atlantic crossing—more ups than doons, I'm telling you!

I was glad to be in America again, glad to see once more the friends I'd made. They turned out to meet me and to greet me in New York, and as I travelled across the continent to San Francisco it was the same. Everywhere I had friends; everywhere they came crowding to shake me by the hand with a "How are you the day, Harry?"

It was a long trip, but it was a happy one. How long ago it seems now, as I write, in this new day of war! How far away are all the common, kindly things that then I did not notice, and that now I would give the world and a' to have back again!

Then, everywhere I went, they pressed their dainties upon me whenever I sat down for a sup and a bite. The board groaned with plenty. I was in a rich country, a country where there was enough for all, and to