"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.

The ticket office is the booking office.

The ticket agent is the booking clerk (pronounced "clark").

A depot is the railway station.

You don't buy your ticket; you "book your ticket."

A policeman is a "Bobbie."

You drive to the left and walk to the right.

An automobile is a motor car.

The carburetor is the mixer.

The storage battery is the accumulator.

Gasolene is petrol.

Ask your way and instead of saying "second street to the left" they will
say "second opening to the left."

If they bump into you instead of saying "excuse me" or "pardon me" they
say "sorry."

Your trunks are "boxes," and your baggage checks are "brasses."

Your hand baggage is "luggage."

I found English audiences just as quick, just as appreciative and even
more enthusiastic than our American audiences--_if you talked about
things they understood and in words they understood_.

But the average American talking act is talking what might just as well
be Greek to them. I never realized until I played in England what an
enormous lot of slang and coined words we Americans use.

Another thing that we Americans are shy on, both in speaking and
singing, is articulation. I always had an idea that I enunciated
uncommonly clearly--until I went over there, when I learned more about
speaking plainly in three days than I had in a lifetime here.

You will notice you can always understand every word and syllable
uttered by an English singer.

One of the funniest things I saw over there were English actors trying
to play "Yankee" characters. The only "Yankee" they had to it was to
spit and say "By Gosh."

Upon the occasion of our first show in England, at Manchester, I said to
my wife,

"Now we are closing the show, so let's get made up early and watch the
other acts, and in that way we can get sort of a line on the particular
style of humor that appeals strongest."

So when the show started we were right there in the wings, watching and
listening.

The first act was a typical English "Comic Singer" of the poorest type,
although we did not know that then. He had a pair of trousers six inches
too short, white hose, an old Prince Albert coat, buttoned up wrong, a
battered silk