Jimmie Taylor, a mimic and comedian, was one of the great favourites of my day. Wherever he went he drew big houses.... [T]he Whitebate in St. Enoch’s Square (which was then an open market ground) was packed to suffocation. Regulations regarding overcrowding did not exist, and naturally the proprietor crammed in as many people as the place would hold.... It makes me sweat even now to think of that terrible night and that terrific jam. The perspiration was rolling plentifully off every mortal in the place, there was no ventilation, and the walls themselves perspired no less copiously than the Whitebate’s unfortunate patrons.... I have often wondered since whether Jimmie Taylor was a droll to the extreme limit or whether it was just sheer coincidence. Anyhow, while we were weltering in our perspiration, up he gets and sings—would you believe it!—a song called “The Chilly Man,” wherein he imitated a man suffering from a cold, his teeth chattering and his limbs shivering. I can’t remember exactly what it was all about but the burden of the chorus was as follows : “I am always chilly, chilly, chilly, I always have been chilly Since the day that I was born.” He put such tremendous realism into the shivering business that although the place was stifling hot he made everyone feel positively cold. Really, it was the earliest example of auto-suggestion in operation that I can recall, and it was screamingly funny to see one sweat-streaming patron draw a hand down his hectic face and say to a fellow-victim, with a pronounced grue, “ Guidsakes, Tam, whit a’ draught there is here! Ah’m fair frozen.” But Jimmie Taylor’s greatest song was not ‘The Chilly Man.’ It was “ Sarah Walker,” and in order to make his mimicry in this and other noted numbers perfect, he had all his teeth—a perfectly good set—taken out, and sang while chewing his gums. << less