FOR YOUNG SHOOTERS 51 



together in the smoking-room. There you sit and 

 smoke and chat until the witching hour of night, 

 when everybody yawns and grave men, as well as 

 gay, go up to their beds. 



Now, since you are an unassuming youngster, 

 and anxious to learn, you ask me, probably, how 

 you are to bear yourself in this important 

 assembly, what you are to speak about, and how. 

 The chief thing, I answer, is not to be a bore. It 

 is so easy not to be a bore if only you give a little 

 thought to it. Nobody wants to be a bore. I can- 

 not imagine any man consciously incurring the 

 execration of his fellow-men. And yet there exist 

 innumerable bores scattered through the length 

 and breadth of our happy country, and carrying 

 on their dismal business with an almost malignant 

 persistency. Longwindedness, pomposity, the ex- 

 aggeration of petty trivialities, the irresistible 

 desire to magnify one's own wretched little achieve- 

 ments, to pose as the little hero of insignificant 

 adventures, and to relate them to the whole world 

 in every dull detail, regardless of the right of other 

 men to get an occasional word in edgewise these 

 are the true marks of the genuine bore. He must 

 know that you take no interest in him or his story. 



E 2 



