r her bracelet,
I gave my _Valentine_.

IRRELEVANT PEOPLE

There are numberless people who are, doubtless, of much interest and
charm--in their proper context. That context we feel, however, is not our
society. We have no objection to their carrying on the business of human
beings, so long as they allow us an uninterrupted trading of, say, a
hundred miles. Within that charmed and charming circle they should not set
foot, and we are quite willing in addition, for them, to gird themselves
about with the circumference of another thousand. It is not that they are
disagreeable or stupid, or in any way obviously objectionable. Bores are
more frequently clever than dull, and the only all-round definition of a
bore is--The Person We Don't Want. Few people are bores at all times and
places, and indeed one might venture on the charitable axiom: that when
people bore us we are pretty sure to be boring them at the same time. The
bore, to attempt a further definition, is simply a fellow human being out
of his element. It is said by travellers from distant lands that fishes
will not live out of water. It is a no less familiar fact that certain
dull metals need to be placed in oxygen to show off their brilliant parts.
So is it with the bore: set him in the oxygen of his native admiration,
and he will scintillate like a human St. Catherine wheel, though in your
society he was not even a Chinese cracker. Every man needs his own stage
and his own audience.

'Hath not love
Made for all these their sweet particular air
To shine in, their own beams and names to bear,
Their ways to wander and their wards to keep,
Till story and song and glory and all things sleep.'

Mr. Swinburne asked the question of lovers, but perhaps it is none the
less applicable to the bore or irrelevant person. Yet a third definition
of the latter here suggests itself. To be born for each other is,
obviously, to be lovers. Well, not to be born for each other is to be
bores. In future, let us not speak unkindly of the tame bore, let us
say--'We were not born for each other.'

Relations do not, perhaps, invariably suggest the first line of
'Endymion'; indeed, they are, one fears, but infrequently celebrated in
song. But the same word in the singular, how beautiful it is! Relation! In
that little word is the whole secret of life. To get oneself placed in
perfect harmony of relation with the world around u