Part 21 (1/2)

”It's all off,” he said; ”nothing doing in the cottage line for me.”

I asked him what had happened to change his mind so suddenly.

”Well, Bill,” he said, ”you know I am not a chap who goes hunting for trouble; I'm nervous; I don't like to be troubled with other people's troubles. This afternoon I was over to Bob Eaton's, and you know he has got some cottages up at the other end of the lake that he rents, furnished.”

”Yes, I knew that.”

”Well,” continued Connelly, ”while I was over to Bob's this afternoon a man who has rented one of these cottages came down there. He had left his cottage and driven twelve miles down to Bob's house to make a kick; and what do you suppose the kick was?”

”Haven't the least idea.”

”There wasn't any nutmeg grater in the cottage. Twelve miles to make a five-cent kick. And my cottages would be only two hundred feet away. No landlord business for your Uncle Edward. No, sir.”

THE TROUBLES OF THE LAUGH GETTERS

It is a solemn business, this getting laughs for a living. Supposing the people don't laugh. Then how are you going to live? Take an act that you have been doing for weeks. Every afternoon and every night the audience laughs at exactly the same lines; this goes on night after night, week after week and city after city. Then you go into some city like Toronto or St. Paul and Hamlet's soliloquy would get as many laughs as you do.

Now what are you going to do? Other players on the bill are getting laughs right along and you, in the language of the stage, are ”dying standing up.”

I have had the same experiences off the stage. I once tried to tell an old German gentleman in St. Louis a story that had been highly recommended to me as being funny. It was about a man going up to a St.

Louis policeman and asking him the quickest way to get to the Mt. Olive hospital. The policeman told him to go over to Grogan's saloon and call the bartender an A. P. A.

Then I waited for the laugh. And immediately I knew I had a Toronto audience. The old man studied a moment, then said,

”Why did he not tell him to take an Olive Street car?”

An old lady from Brooklyn was visiting us. I told her one of Lew Dockstader's stories. How he had a girl over in Brooklyn. Her father was an undertaker. And Lew could always tell how business was with the old man by the looks of the table. If he had had a good job lately there would be flowers on the table, and ice on the b.u.t.ter.

I waited for the laugh. ”But the giggle that he longed for never came.”

The old lady looked up with a look of interest and said,

”Did he say what their name was? Perhaps we knew them.”

I met a banker in Toronto. I tried to tell him a story referring to the banking business, hoping against hope that I might get one laugh in that city. I told him about a colored man who went into a colored bank down South and wanted to draw out his deposit of twenty dollars that had been in there for eight years. And the colored cas.h.i.+er told him he did not have any money in there. That the interest had eaten it up long ago.

”Yes,” said the banking gentleman, with a pitying smile, ”very clever.

But he was wrong, you know; interest adds to your princ.i.p.al, not detracts.”