Shakspeare.

The good and the bad things of earth are strangely mingled together, and you cannot have either separately. Agreeable friends are blessings; but one cannot form acquaintances, without contracting some sort of alliances with those who are especially disagreeable. For what purpose bores were created, it would be difficult to determine; perhaps, to teach us patience and forbearance. It certainly requires as much patience to remain cool under the inflictions of dulness, as for any thing else in life; and to be able to forbear, when you feel tempted to kick stupidity out of your presence, is a virtue indeed.

There are two leading classes of bores—the garrulous and the taciturn. Heaven help you, when you are victimized by one of the first class! He deluges you with words. He inflicts all the scandal and news upon you, while you look like Resignation hugging a whipping-post. You feel irritated awhile, and then sick. He has tongue enough for both, and only requires that you resolve yourself into a horrible deformity, by becoming all ear. You gape, and show symptoms of sleep. He doesn't care; you may sleep, or dislocate your jaws, as you please. He is one of the emissaries of fate, sent on earth to punish, and he means to fulfil the purpose of his destiny. There is no getting clear of his noise; and you may as well be as complacent as you can, and regard his tongue as the scourge which inflicts chastisement for past sin.

Again, a taciturn bore drops into your presence. You talk first on one subject and then on some other; but instead of showing interest, he looks as if his leaden eyelid would fall in spite of your efforts. You think the fellow a fool; and can scarcely resist the propensity to enlighten him in regard to himself, by telling him so. You look 'unutterable things' at him; but you cannot stir him up. Your heart sinks within you, and for a moment you look the model of a statue of despair. You ask him to read the morning paper, but he is tired to death of politics. You offer him a book, and he fumbles it listlessly for a moment, and puts it down. Your agony becomes excruciating; your friend looks like the impersonation of the nightmare, and he clings to you, as the old man of the sea clung to Sinbad.

The present is the age of bores. No skill can avoid them. Like the enemy of your soul's salvation, they go about seeking whose peace they may destroy. They infest every society, and their name is Legion. If you were to seek a cave in some far-off mountain, they would find you out; or if, in despair, you should drown yourself, in the sea, the ghost of some bore would be sure to rise with yours from the waters, and torture your shade on its way to 'kingdom come.' Whether you sit down, lie down, read, write, or reflect, you must be annoyed by the presentiment of bores and coming evils. Your apprehensions are ceaseless, and you momentarily expect the Philistines will be upon you—Philistines who wield the weapon which was fatal to their ancestors of old.