sequently looked upon as a pleasant fellow, with plenty to say for
himself. After tea, in the drawing-room, you have had an hour or two
for the writing of letters, which you have of course not written, for
the reading of the morning papers from London which you have skimmed
with a faint interest, and for the forty or eighty or one hundred
and twenty winks in an armchair in front of the fire, which are by
no means the least pleasant and comforting incident in the day's
programme. You have dressed for dinner in good time; you have tied
your white tie successfully "in once;" you have taken in a charming
girl (ROSE LARKING, let us say) to dinner. The dinner itself has been
good, the drawing-room interlude after dinner has been pleasantly
varied with music, and the ladies have, with the tact for which they
are sometimes distinguished, retired early to bed-rooms, where it is
believed they spend hours in the combing of their beautiful hair, and
the interchange of gossip. You are in high spirits. You think, indeed
you are sure (and again, on thinking it well over, not quite so sure),
that the adorable ROSE looked kindly upon you as she said good-night,
and allowed her pretty little hand to linger in your own while you
assured her that to-morrow you would get for her the pinion-feather
of a woodcock, or die in the attempt. You are now arrayed in your
smoking-coat (the black with the red silk-facings), and your velvet
slippers with your initials worked in gold--a birthday present from
your sister. All the rest are, each after his own fashion, similarly
attired, and the whole male party is gathered 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
cannot 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 exaggeration of petty trivialities, the irresistible
d