The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-04-27
CONGRESSIONAL HoRsEMEN.
TALK ABOUT BORES.
The People, Innocent or Guilty, Male or
Female, Who Make You Tired.

TALK ABOUT BORES.
Inc People, Innocent or Guilty, Male or
Female, Who Make You Tired.
From the Spectator.
The best security of all against being
bore is, when you are with other people, to
take more interest in their concerns than
you do in your own. A man who really
feels this will hardly ever be bore, but
then it is also true that he will not and can
not be great social force in the world
Fortunately, very few of US could be great
social forces and, therefore, that is posi-
bllty which applies only to the few. Still,
for those few who can, it is essential that
they should, as rule, take more interest in
what they themselves want to urge upon
others than III that which others have to
urge upon them otherwise they Will expend
In sympathy the opportunities which ought
to be economical for influencing the minds
OF others Just as in rare cases it is posi-
tive duty for even the most humble of men
to be bore, so in great many cases it is
a necessity for those who are competent
greatly to influence the minds of others, not
to frltter themselves away too much in
studying or approaching the natures which
they want to sweep along with them into
some new current Of conviction. Man is a
very limited creature, and if he is mainly
bent on not being bore he must give up
the notion of living mainly for the interests
of Others There never was a great man
yet who, for any of the main purposes of
his llfe was not reckless whether he bored
others or not. And, though it is certainly
right for ordinary men to aim at not max
ing themselves bores, 1t is but a modest kind
of ambition, and one on which they have
certainly no cause to plume themselves too
much.
In fact, we are of opinion that the greater
number OF those whom men call bores are
innocent bores-the men with great moral
purpose, for instance, miserably as they often
fail from want of tact in achieving what
they aim at; the men, again, who are happy
cyclists, and who chatter of themselves not
with any intention of boring you, but be-
cause the thought Of themselves has sort
of intoxicating effect upon them, and they
can hardly help communicating the good
spirits with which it fills them to those to-
ward whom they feel kindly; the men,
again, who are humoristS without either
pride or sensitiveness, and go on laughing
and cracking jokes without the least con-
seriousness that they are not adding to the
happiness of their companions. All these
are innocent bores into whose ranks it is
only too easy for any man or woman to fall
without great culpability, and their fault is
one which it is very easy to congratulate
ones self too much on avoiding, even though
it be as effectually as Mr. Rogers tells us
very probably quite justly-that he hopes
he has avoided 1t. Even the really deadly
bore, the bore whom it is essential to avoid
if you would save your reason-the bore
who is possessed with the instinct of a linn
pet for clinging to you, and the instinct of
a leech for drawing blood-is, in nine cases
out of ten, as guiltles5, though not quite as
unaware, of the mischief he does, as the
gall nut or the milldew, or the Colorado
beetle. He seems to be endowed with lust
that consciousness that he is apt to be avoid
ed, which gives him deadly dexterity in
Selling occasions when hardly even the cru
elest of men would repulse him, and which
even endows him with the craft to discern
the fitting moment to do real kindness
such as may prove rich in securing oppor-
tunities of future boredom. You see by the
glitter in his eye how thoroughly he appre-
ciateS the passionate wish of his victim to
escape him, and how determined he is to
defeat that wish. And yet it is all uncon-
scious instinct, not malignant intention. He
has inherited, without knowing it, the avid
ity of the parasite for dropping upon the
sort of life on which it prays. He knows,
by all the instincts of hungry nature that
it is for his good that he shall make you his
victim, and he probably believes, i'll a half
conscious sort of fashion, that what is so
eminently for his own good must be for
yours too. But for all that every fiber in
him seems to vibrate to the automatic con-
victiOn that you will try and shake him off,
like the tick of the tropics when it makes
dart at your foot and burrows in II before
you can have notice of its neighborhood.
The whole art of the man consists in the
terrible variety and ingenuity of the small
graphing instruments vita which he de-
feats that maneuver, and hugs mis- prey
while he inf1ictS on it the wearisome COM
munications of which he is stored so full.
He watches every inpatient movement of
your hand or foot with the keenness of a
hunter and provides against it some fresh
device Of his diabolical good humor or COM
placency. 1t is impossible to call such a
man as this an innocent bore, because his
boredom is a deadly and elaborate art And
yet we believe that he is usually guiltless Of
intending the fortunes he achieves. He is
what 'Eothen" says that the European is to
the Turk-"a mysterious, unaccountable,
uncomfortable work of God, who may have
been sent for some good purpose-to be re-
vealed hereafter" But though he is a fear
full instrument in the hand of destiny, he is
not ordinarily a deliberate and conscious
torturer. He has experienced so often and so
painfully the wit with which men devise the
means of Kidding themselves of him, that
nature has developed in him an automatic
organization for anticipating and defeating
that wit; and of the terrible blight he causes
to others he is, we believe, usually as I'M
conscious as the Hessian fly itself. And if
this most terrible Of all forms of bore is, as
we sincerely believe, more deserving, on the
whole, of pity than of censure, we certainly
ought not to pride ourselves 80 much as we
often do on avoiding with tolerable SUCCESS
those minor peccadilloes in the boring of
our fellow creatures, which all "such beings
as we are, in such world as the present."
are habitually in danger of committing.