(?a??a)

We may define a bore as a man who cannot refrain from talking. A bore is the sort of fellow who, the moment you open your mouth, tells you that your remarks are idle, that he knows all about it, and if you’ll only listen, you’ll soon find it out. As you attempt to make answer, he suddenly breaks in with such interruptions as: “Don’t forget what you were about to say”—“That reminds me”—“What an admirable thing talk is!”—“But, as I omitted to mention”—“You grasp the idea at once”—“I was watching this long time to see whether you would come to the same conclusion as myself.” In phrases like this he’s so fertile that the person who happens to meet him cannot even open his mouth to speak.

When he has vanquished a few stray victims here and there, his next move is to advance upon whole companies and put them to flight in the midst of their occupations. He goes upon the wrestling ground or into the schools, and prevents the boys from making progress with their lessons, so incessant is his talk with the teachers and the wrestling-masters.

If you say you are going home, he’s pretty sure to come along and escort you to your house.

Whenever he learns the day set for the session of the Assembly he noises it diligently abroad, and recalls Demosthenes’s famous bout with Aeschines in the archonship of Aristophon. He mentions, too, his own humble effort on a certain occasion, and the approval which it won among the people. As he rattles on he launches invectives against the masses, in such fashion that his audience either becomes oblivious or begins to doze, or else melts away in the midst of his harangue.

When he’s on a jury he’s an obstacle to reaching a verdict, when he’s in the theatre he prevents attention to the play; at a feast he hinders eating, remarking that silence is too much of an effort, that his tongue is hung in the middle, and that he couldn’t keep still, even though he should seem a worse chatterer than a magpie; and when he’s made a butt by his own children, he submits,—when in their desire to go to sleep they say, “Papa, tell us something, in order that sleep may come.”