A WORD ABOUT BORES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4755, 24 September 1924, Page 4

A WORD ABOUT BORES.

BRIDGEHS OF SOCIAL GULFS. WILL COME INTO HIS OWN. If we hear that a man is a bore we can be pretty sure that we shall hear nothing worse of him. Real bores, born bores, people, we mean, who relate common incidents at undue length and dilate ad nauseam upon the obvious, are, as a rule, more than ordinarily good. Egoists and progaga ndistjs are often called bores, but only if they happen to be stupid. The most entertaining people in the world are often both. Neither do we mean by a bore' the argument-provoker—-nuisance as he often is. We are speaking only of the bore proper—i.e., the man who is an incorrigible narrator and who deals conversationally in what his acquaintances on his own social level consider, to be the detestable. Outside that eclectic circle he is GENERALLY VERY MUCH LIKED. A bore Is never ill-natured, never a cynic, never a nice critic, and very seldom bad tempered. Consequently, we find him ais a rule with a very affectionate wife and children ; nearly always, too, he is -.popular with his dependents and simpler neighbours. How often does one hear it said, "So-and-So is an unholy bore, no doubt, but his wife is such a charming little woman that we all put up with him for her sake Does he worry her ? Oh, dear no! She adores him, and so do the children I” If we make further inquiries we shall hear that the poor people like him immensely, and that if he should happen to be a country parson we may be told that he is welcome in every cottage in the place. The truth would seem to be that the natural man has a pleasure in monotony. Just as he likes to do what he has done before, so he likes to hear again what he knows already. His taste is for sedatives, not stimulants. The - amount of sympathy expended on those who have to do monotonous work is simply ridiculous.' Long hours spent in stuffy rooms do indeed call for pity, but monotonous work under good conditions with a reasonable amount of “time off” is what half the world at least would choose. Some monotony seems to be almost necessary, - at least to women. Dull needlework and knitting rank very high among their pleasures. There is no doubt something delightful in repetition. Children are always repeating. Once let them get a tune or a verse, a catchword into their heads, and they will drive their elders wild in their pursuit of monotony. It is impossible to stop them. The only thing is to turn them out of doors with their little companions and let them repeat themselves hoarse. We alßrequire a certain amount of comedy and philosophy to feed our minds.. The less sophisticated, those who have learnt least of the art of life, like their mental food given th'em by word of mouth, and they like it very plain and plenty, without the condiment of surprise. THE BITTER OF SATIRE, or the meretricious falsehood of manufactured irony. They will take nothing as read, partly, no doubt, because they, have read so little. They like to be able. to. recognise and confirm the truth of what is said. They like fun and humour, but it must be labelled and kept separate from serious. The bore knows nothing of tures which they imagine to be poisonous. The bore knosw nothing of caprices and miked moods, and this enables him to impart to his hearers a sense of safety. Then most bores like very much to talk about health. The great adventure of sickness looms large in their eyes, as it must do in any society whose circumstances do not allow of the segregation of the invalid. The art of life requires of its students that they should a little hide its details, but the bore knows nothing of the art of life, and by his ignorance wins for himself a character for sympathy. The same.is true when death is concerned, for the bore is almost always a realist Much that all social artists keep in the background the bore proclaims on the housetops. He does not beiiieve what most so-called “interesting?” people do believe—that conversational familiarity with deaths saps courage, and here a great cloud of simple witnesses will bear him out. The thought of death, with its strange dynamic power to destroy gaiety and create hope, attacks him, and he likes .to enlarge on it, together with “the simple” who never “go away ashamed” because he has shut up when they Svanted him to listen to what struck them as gruesomely and gloomily dramatic. The copybook is a dull book only to those who. have read many others. Bores and uncultivated people find in the concise expression of their own mortal experiences very .great consolation and pleasure. "Hotw l true!” -S their favourite mental expression. It serves them as a KIND OF SECULAR ALLELUIA. After all, the clever man's pleasure in the mark of interrogation is often at least as conventional. No piece of special- pleading for the bore could be complete which omit-, ted to mention his power to bridge social gulfs. We all Bind ourselves occasionally in an alien social circle in which, for reasons of self-interest or charity, we are intensely anxious to “get on.” On a run;g of a ladder above Or below that to iirhich we. are accustomed we feel shy abid awkward. With what joy at such a’ moment do we w/jlcome the bore. We know what he nrieans. He speaks a Ifingda franca. We may hate the language, but; at beast we can “get along’" in it. If the company: is small and -lie happens to be our host.we may rest assured that all 'will go well. We ,are strangers no longer. In these 'flays of social general post, the bore inuist undoubtedly come into his owio.