But few people, I repeat, realise the difficulty of reproducing a humorous or comic effect in its original spirit.

“I saw Harry Lauder last night,” said Griggs, a Stock Exchange friend of mine, as we walked up town together the other day.  “He came on to the stage in kilts” (here Grigg started to chuckle) “and he had a slate under his arm” (here Griggs began to laugh quite heartily), “and he said, ‘I always like to carry a slate with me’ (of course he said it in Scotch but I can’t do the Scotch the way he does it) ’just in case there might be any figures I’d be wanting to put down’” (by this time, Griggs was almost suffocated with laughter)—­“and he took a little bit-of chalk out of his pocket, and he said” (Griggs was now almost hysterical), “’I like to carry a wee bit chalk along because I find the slate is’” (Griggs was now faint with laughter) “’the slate is—­is—­not much good without the chalk.’”

Griggs had to stop, with his hand to his side, and lean against a lamp-post.  “I can’t, of course, do the Scotch the way Harry Lauder does it,” he repeated.

Exactly.  He couldn’t do the Scotch and he couldn’t do the rich mellow voice of Mr. Lauder and the face beaming with merriment, and the spectacles glittering with amusement, and he couldn’t do the slate, nor the “wee bit chalk”—­in fact he couldn’t do any of it.  He ought merely to have said, “Harry Lauder,” and leaned up against a post and laughed till he had got over it.

Yet in spite of everything, people insist on spoiling conversation by telling stories.  I know nothing more dreadful at a dinner table than one of these amateur raconteurs—­except perhaps, two of them.  After about three stories have been told, there falls on the dinner table an uncomfortable silence, in which everybody is aware that everybody else is trying hard to think of another story, and is failing to find it.  There is no peace in the gathering again till some man of firm and quiet mind turns to his neighbour and says, “But after all there is no doubt that whether we like it or not prohibition is coming.”  Then everybody in his heart says, “Thank heaven!” and the whole tableful are happy and contented again, till one of the story-tellers “thinks of another,” and breaks loose.

Worst of all perhaps is the modest story-teller who is haunted by the idea that one has heard this story before.  He attacks you after this fashion: 

“I heard a very good story the other day on the steamer going to Bermuda”—­then he pauses with a certain doubt in his face—­“but perhaps you’ve heard this?”

“No, no, I’ve never been to Bermuda.  Go ahead.”

“Well, this is a story that they tell about a man who went down to Bermuda one winter to get cured of rheumatism —­but you’ve heard this?”

“No, no.”

“Well he had rheumatism pretty bad and he went to Bermuda to get cured of it.  And so when he went into the hotel he said to the clerk at the desk—­but, perhaps you know this.”