Young Neville pays Mashmouth to laugh at silent films

His father, who had a butcher shop, gave him one and six for the pictures plus an extra threepence he claimed was for candy; instead he paid a big barefoot man called Mashmouth threepence every Saturday night to laugh at the wrong moment, which always got Mashmouth evicted — so Mashmouth learned to hold his laugh until near the end.
Date (happened)
c. 1910
unresolved
  1. c. 1910 stated · preferred
    Source Imagination My Slave ¶20"every Saturday night", told in Imagination My Slave (nid 1811)
Place
Barbados
Persons
Neville Goddard
Joseph "Joe" Goddard (Neville's father)
Told / reported
  1. 13 February 1967 estimated
    Source Imagination My Slave ¶20passage 545173 (lecture nid 1811, "Imagination My Slave"); lecture's two delivery claims agree exactly -- d0 1967-02-13 exact/certain (linked catalogue lecture event) and d1 1967-02-13 exact/certain (chrome header dateline '2/13/67')
    Reasoning Passage 545173 is Neville narrating in the first person his childhood arrangement paying Mashmouth threepence a week to laugh at the wrong moment during the silent films -- this is the telling. The owning lecture nid 1811 carries two independently sourced delivery claims that agree exactly on 1967-02-13 exact/certain. The telling inherits that precision and confidence exactly.
Sources

Source

  • Imagination My Slave ¶20 (I gave him six cents every Saturday night to laugh at the wrong time. If he didn’t laugh at the wrong time, he paid his own way.)