BORES.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 14053, 10 November 1909, Page 3

BORES.

We all have something of the "bore in us, but most of us know that, and recognise the signs of boredom in others. The thorough bore does not It is enough for him that he has a victim, and he notices his victim's sufferings no more than a high east wind notices tho discomborfc of tho trees. Indeed, he seems to have tho pitiless energy of a high east wind, at least when lie is in company. For we may suspert that when he is alone he bores himself, so eagerly does he look for some one to vent himself Tipon. If a bore were cast alone upon a desert island his mind would probably burst with accumulated dullness, and for that reason he haunts populous places sucli as clubs. Conversation is for him. a- means, not of exchanging ideas, but of easing his mind; and that is why we dislike him so much. His airs of friendliness are all pretence. All listeners are the same to him if only he can prevent them from running away. His mind is always full of rubbish to be discharged , and he will discharge it on any one who comes in his way. We may wonder why it is so full of rubbish, but if we knew that we should know the secret of a lwre. There is certainly some defect in his mind that causes it to reject anything interesting, whatever chances it may have. If a bore could come to life who had been through tho retreat from Moscow he would not only tell ns what ho said to Napoleon, and how he never lost a purse that his aunt had knitted for him; and then he would tell ns a long story about his aunt. Nothing ever seems to happen to a bore that is worth telling. He goes through life with only dull experiences; and that perhaps is the secret of his enormous energy. Most men use up their energy in experience, but the bore does not. Experience only presents itself to him as something to talk about; when it comes to him he is thinking all the while of what he will say about it, and therefore he has nothing to say that is worth saying,, but a vast deal of energy to spend in saying it. Mores often have wives, and seem to get on with them well enough. In such cases we must assume that they do not bore their wives; but the married life of a bore with a hapny wile i< a mystery almost beyond eonieotnre. Perhaps in his relations with bis wife the bore manages to forcet himself and becomes a real man, talking of thiims for their own sake and not so that he may make conversation about them. In his relations with other people be does not seem to be a real man. This air of unreality is perhaps the chief reason why he is a bore. He is tiresome, like machine-made things, liko a gramophone, or a piano organ, or a ehromo-litbonraph. But how he comes to be sn unreal no one can tell. The

n-itme of a bore's mind will never be known, for be can tell us nothing concerning it- Jf 1>« could, he would not. be a bore. A man capable of writing a -rood book on bores would be so far front -.i bore himself that be could know nothing about them, except what he learnt bv observation, and no man could have' a devotion to science, so heroic as to seek the society of bores with the object of writing a book on them. This, no doubt, is the reason why there is no famous bore in our literature.