Now, if you are an old angler you know what happens if you begin to tug
at the line the first time you get a bite. When you hook a fish, if he
happens to be a Munster, you have got to keep your head and play him,
let him have the line, let him go, keep steady, no excitement, give him
play. I gave him a bit of line, that young Munster. I thanked him for
his compliment and then walked away—with my eyes over my shoulder, for
if he hadn’t come after me I should have been after him.
Presently he pulled my tunic and said, “Won’t you give me a minute,
sir?”
“What’s the trouble?” I said.
“Sir,” he said, with a little catch in his voice that I can hear now,
“you’ve got something I haven’t.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“It’s like the singing of a little song, and it gets into my heart. I
want it. Won’t you tell me how to get it? I want it.”
“Sonny,” I said, “it’s for you. You can have it at the same price I paid
for it.”
“Begorra,” says he, “you will tell me to give up my religion, you
will!”
I said, “If God has put anything in your life that helps you to be a
better and a nobler and a braver man, He doesn’t want you to give it
up.”
“He doesn’t?” he asked. “What am I to give up, then?”
And I replied, “Your sin.”
The boy said again, “You’re a gentleman.”
If I had said one word about his religion or his creed, my line would
have snapped and I would have lost my fish.
That night, when all the boys had gone, we got into a corner and we
knelt down, and when he went he said, “I’ve got it, sir. I’ve got the
little song—_and it’s singing_.”
* * * * *
At one of my meetings the boys were four thousand strong and the
Commandant of the camp was to preside. As they say in the Army, he had
got the wind up. He did not know me. When he saw the crowd there he
began to wonder what was going to happen. He called one of the officers
to him, and said,
“I don’t know what he’s going to do. I hope he’s not going to give us a
revival meeting or something of that sort. I hope he knows that
one-third of these fellows are Roman Catholics.”
Well, of course I knew, and I was laying my plans accordingly. What
right have you or I when we have got a mixed crowd like that to try to
cram our preconceived programme down everybody’s throat? The officer,
who was one of my friends, said to the Colonel, “I don’t think you need
trouble, sir. He’s all right, and knows his job.”
When we were ready, I went to the Colonel, and said, “We are quite ready
to begin, sir.”
The Colonel rose and announced, “Officers, non-commissioned officers,
and men, I now introduce to you Gipsy Smith, who will perform.”
Now, the first thing I wanted to do was to disarm all prejudice in the
mind of both officers and men. So I said, “Are you ready, boys?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, we’ll have our opening hymn, ‘Keep the home fires burning.’”
And didn’t those boys sing that! Some of them were smoking, and I
wasn’t going to tell them not to smoke. That would have put their
backs up. They were British boys and they knew what to do when the right
moment came. And so I said, “Boys, you sang that very well, but you were
not _all_ singing. Now, if we have another, will you all sing?” And they
answered, “Yes.” I knew if they sang they couldn’t smoke. So we had
“Pack up your troubles,” and this time every smoke was out and every
boy was singing. “We’ll have another,” said I, when they had finished;
“we’ll have—
‘Way down in Tennessee
Just try to think of me
Right on my mother’s knee.’”