hough, like everybody else, he had often
seen Grossmith on the stage, had never seen him without
his make-up and did not know him by sight. He examined
his patient, looked at his tongue, felt his pulse and
tapped his lungs. Then he shook his head. 'There's nothing
wrong with you, sir,' he said, 'except that you're run
down from overwork and worry. You need rest and amusement.
Take a night off and go and see George Grossmith at the
Savoy.' 'Thank you,' said the patient, 'I _am_ George
Grossmith.'"

Let the reader please observe that I have purposely told
this story all wrongly, just as wrongly as could be, and
yet there is something left of it. Will the reader kindly
look back to the beginning of it and see for himself just
how it ought to be narrated and what obvious error has
been made? If he has any particle of the artist in his
make-up, he will see at once that the story ought to
begin:

"One day a very haggard and nervous-looking patient called
at the house of a fashionable doctor, etc. etc."

In other words, the chief point of the joke lies in
keeping it concealed till the moment when the patient
says, "Thank you, I am George Grossmith." But the story
is such a good one that it cannot be completely spoiled
even when told wrongly. This particular anecdote has been
variously told of George Grossmith, Coquelin, Joe Jefferson,
John Hare, Cyril Maude, and about sixty others. And I
have noticed that there is a certain type of man who, on
hearing this story about Grossmith, immediately tells it
all back again, putting in the name of somebody else,
and goes into new fits of laughter over it, as if the
change of name made it brand new.

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