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 butter.
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 cashier 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 principal, not detracts."