have for long -suspected, and. I now am satisfied, that the bore, acts with guilty knowledge, that the accepted bore well knows himself to be such, and, indeed, derives some perverted form of pleasure from witnessing the havoc which his. appearance creates.
Twas watching, from an armchair in the smoking-room at the. Elect to-day, the entry of our recognized Dare, and I realized that as he swam *2) into'the room, slowly turning his head from right to left in seaich.of 'a victim, there was definite blood lust in his eyes. The hhavee he caused was no more-than normal, but undoubtedly he. was enjoying every moment of it, Major-Gen, Blunderbuss, whose eyes were momentarily disengaged in the act of raising his glass of sherry, crashed the glass down untasted, anid-hid himself behind a copy of the "Architectural Gazette" that Lay handy. Old Sir Ferdinand 'Tawny, who haw not set his left foot {othe ground for three deceites, abandoned his stick and favourite, armchair and covered the distance' to the door in level time. Lord Brondacres. realizing too late his isolated and vulnerable position,"had no time to make a plan, and it vias instinct which prompted him in the nick of time to seize a Bradshaw and call loudly to a passing waiter for a telegraph form, Its. arrival enabled him to break away. 4 the Bgoivt A bore is, of course, nothing but an egoist, one who believes that his affairs, his views, his voice are supremely and universally worth hearing. He is not of necessity, without brains. wrangler, an inventor, an exe plorer of forbidden Tibet may bey and often is, a bore. A man who has a story to tell becomes a bore if in the telling he cannot divorce his own ego from the fact or nows-item he has to relate. That is why we are all of us capable of boring our frjends—because in moments of welf-pity (following influenza) our ego swells and dwarfs our cosmos. The recognized or throttling bore is one whose ego looks down, a menace permanent Albert Memorial, on square no bigger than a backyard, Golf is a selfish game; success depends very largely on your own efforts, That is why golf shop is always boring. Roulette shop, on the other hand, may be quite' the reverse. On the whole the crown of boredom is reserved for thave sportsmen who tell you about the ions they have shot and those snobs who tell you about the lions they. have met.
After dinner speakers are bore almost to a man. The reason; think, is that after dinner speeches appear to demand anecdotes, and anecdotes re gone out of fashion. Gone, too, is the patient endurance that enabled human beings to ait for Jong periods on a hard dining-room) chair. The race of listeners ist ced emasculated. Gone are the heroes of old who. listened tol Macaulay and applauded. Sydney Smith, or even Chauncey Depew. The American export public diner is beginning to find his best market closing to him,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.