NEW WORLD’S RECORD

Evening Star, Issue 20053, 19 December 1928, Page 9

NEW WORLD’S RECORD

LOQUACITY AS A PROFESSION Tile world’s loquacity record has {says ‘The Times’) been established, and by e. man. It was long overdue, but the delay has proved worth while, for the new champion, Herr Parlatus, of lierliu, has spoken for 120 hours on end. Ho is a professional, who rightly uses every advantage, and performs in a bcershop; but the amateur championship' may still bo talked for anywhere by those who cannot give up so much of their lives to what is, after all, only a form of athletics. Yet the notion that a man should not give uj) all his time to sport is often unsound. It is plainly so in this case, and Herr Parlatus can hardly be congratulated too warmly or at too groat length. He has repaired a glaring weakness in the general record of mankind, and has removed a painful anomaly. How is it that in an ago of wireless and telephones we have not learnt to talk any longer than the men of the Slone Age? iVc still tiro aflcr a very few hours of monologue, and our talent for listening is, anything, rather less. The dice arc loaded against long-windedness, yet it would bo a grave pity if it became a lost art, and there vanished with it the whole faculty of circumlocution and the subsidiary arts of redundancy and repetition. _ To say nothing, and to say it often, is the golden rule, not only for embarrassed politicians, but for all sorts of public characters, and to-day anyone may find himself a public character.