When Eddie Lawrence first performed his new comedy routine for his agent and a few entertainment executives, they told him that they loved it but that it was too clever for most people to understand. Mr. Lawrence had more faith in his audience.

He began the routine in a nasally whimper, a voice he later described as “sort of a crying Jolson.”

“Hiya, folks,” he said. “You say you lost your job today? You say it’s 4 a.m. and your kids ain’t come home from school yet? You say your wife went out for a corned beef sandwich last weekend — the corned beef sandwich came back but she didn’t? You say your furniture’s out all over the sidewalk cause you can’t pay the rent and you got chapped lips and paper cuts and your feet’s all swollen up and blistered from pounding the pavement looking for work? Is that’s what’s troubling you, fella?” Then, as banal background music gave way to a marching band, Mr. Lawrence abandoned the whimper for a bellow.

“Lift your head up high!” he thundered. “Take a walk in the sun with that dignity and stick-to-it-iveness, and you’ll show the world, you’ll show them where to get off. You’ll never give up, never give up, never give up — that ship!”

And so was born “the Old Philosopher,” a character and routine that became Mr. Lawrence’s bread and butter. Mr. Lawrence, who died on Tuesday in Manhattan at 95, structured the routine like a song, alternating tales of his fictional victims’ strange troubles with his clichéd refrain to carry on.