I have
been bored to the verge of suicide by some worthy soul who insisted
upon talking to me of (presumably) my pet subject--myself--and who was
doing his poor little best to say nice things and to be entertaining.

A bore is a man or a woman who never knows How or When. There are
times in the lives of all of us when it bores us to be talked to of
home or friends or wife or husband or mother or religion. There are
times when nothing but a large, comfortable silence can soothe the
worry and fret of a trying day. At such times let the tactless woman
and the thoughtless man beware, because everything they say will be a
bore.

It is not wilful cruelty which makes us say that (to a woman) the word
"bore" is in the masculine gender and objective case, object of our
deepest detestation. Men are oftener bores than women, for two
reasons: One is that they seldom stop to think that they could be a
bore to anybody; and the second is that we women never let them see
that we are being bored, for it is our aim in life to look pleasant
and to keep the men's vanity done up in pink cotton, no matter if we
are secretly almost dropping from our chairs with weariness--the
utter, unspeakable weariness of the soul, compared to which weariness
of the body is a luxury.

Women are too tender-hearted. A woman cannot bear to hurt a man's
feelings by letting him know that he is killing her by his stupidity.
And even if she did, in the noble spirit of altruism, rather than
selfishness, the next woman, with one reproachful glance at her, would
pick up the mutilated remains of the man's vanity and apply the
splints of her respectful attention and the balm of her admiration,
partly to add a new scalp to her belt, and partly to show off the
unamiability of her sister woman.

So it is of no use to kick against the pricks. Bores are in this world
for a purpose--to chasten the proud spirit of women, who otherwise
might become too indolent and ease-loving to be of any use--and they
are here to stay. We have no conscience concerning women bores. We
escape from them ruthlessly. And, perhaps, because women are quicker
to take a hint is the reason there are fewer of them. It is only the
men who are left helpless in their ignorance, because no woman has the
courage to tell them.

Our only defence is in telling the men in bulk what we have not the
courage nor the wish to tell the individual, and letting them sit down
and think hard, applying the relentl