Upon investigation I found that there was probably not one person in ten thousand in those manufacturing towns of England who ever saw a piece of ice. They didn't know but that you could bake it.
It took me only three days to discover that I was in wrong with The Wyoming Whoop. So the next week in Liverpool I switched to Bill Biffin's Baby. Now we were on the right track. We had a subject, Babies, that they understood and liked. But on the second show I began writing it over—into the English language. I found that in twenty-four minutes I was using thirty-two words that they either knew nothing of, or else meant something entirely different from what I intended they should.
For instance: Take the words Trolley Car. An American player spoke of having seen a lady riding on a trolley, and the audience went into fits. The player was astounded; he hadn't told his "gag" at all yet—(and, by the way, it isn't a "gag" there; it is a "wheeze")—and the audience was laughing. And then when he finally told his "gag" not a soul laughed. Upon investigation he found that over there what he meant by a trolley car was "a tram." And what they called a "trolley" was the baggage truck down at the railway station that they hauled trunks around on.
Another of their "gags" was—
"I saw you coming out of a saloon this morning."
"Well, I couldn't stay in there all day, could I?"
Received with more chunks of silence.
He meant a place where they sold liquor. He should have said "a Pub."
A "saloon" there is a barber shop.