Part 5

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.’”

I knew if I got them round their mothers’ knees I should be all right.

“Now, boys,” I said, “what am I to talk to you about?” I let them choose their subject very often.

“Tell us the story of the gipsy tent,” they called out.