Bore

“ From the Blue Books croakers borrow—sorrow for the days of yore,
For the days when "Rule Britannia" sounded far o'er sea and shore.
Ah! it must have been a bore!
But on that let's draw the curtain. I am simply cock-sure—certain
That "our splendid little Army" never was so fine before.
It will take a lot of beating! Such remarks I keep repeating;
They come handy—after eating, and are always sure to score—
Dash that rapping chap entreating entrance at my Office-door!
It is an infernal bore! ”

“ A man who will undertake to deliver such an unconscionably prosy preachment, on the very apex of a high Alp, is no longer merely becoming a bore, but has become one—in fact is a bore, and that of the first magnitude. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A dun is a bore, and a sermon is a bore, and so forth; but the greatest of all possible bores, in whatever spelling, is a husband, a bore at night, a bore in the morning, and, in short, one general universal bore. ”

“ His cruel sceptre bore;
The Nobles of the land did feed
Upon the hungry poor;
They tear the poor man's lamb, and drive
The needy from their door!
The land is desolate; our wives
And children cry for bread ”

“ We might, no doubt, find it a nuisance to count all the blades of grass or all the leaves of the trees; but this would not be because of our boldness or gaiety, but because of our lack of boldness and gaiety. The bore would go onward, bold and gay, and find the blades of grass as splendid as the swords of an army. The bore is stronger and more joyous than we are ”

“ The bore is usually considered a harmless creature, or of that class of irrational bipeds who hurt only themselves. ”

“ It is unnecessary to say that we keep a bore. Everybody does. But, the bore whom we have the pleasure and honour of enumerating among our particular friends, is such a generic bore, and has so many traits (as it appears to us) in common with the great bore family, that we are tempted to make him the subject of the present notes. May he be generally accepted!
Our bore is admitted on all hands to be a good-hearted man. He may put fifty people out of temper, but he keeps his own. ”

“ At one period of his life, our bore had an illness. It was an illness of a dangerous character for society at large. Innocently remark that you are very well, or that somebody else is very well; and our bore, with a preface that one never knows what a blessing health is until one has lost it, is reminded of that illness, and drags you through the whole of its symptoms, progress, and treatment. ”

“ When I used to lie in bed in the morning for a rest—we had no easy-chairs in Silverado—I would hear, hour after hour, the sharp cutting sound of his labours, and from time to time a dainty shower of sawdust would fall upon the blankets. There lives no more industrious creature than a bore. ”

“ Our bore, in a similar manner, being in Italy, made a discovery of a dreadful picture, which has been the terror of a large portion of the civilized world ever since. We have seen the liveliest men paralysed by it, across a broad dining-table. ”

“ A bore is a heavy animal, and his weight has this peculiarity, that it increases every moment he stays near you. The French describe this property in one word, which, though French, I may be permitted to quote, because untranslatable, il s’appesantit—Touch and go, it is not in the nature of a bore to do—whatever he touches turns to lead. ”

“ Next day, I'll come again.' In a week our bore was on his legs, and Jilkins's success dates from that period!
Our bore is great in secret information. He happens to know many things that nobody else knows. ”

“ He happens to know what such a man got by such a transaction, and it was fifteen thousand five hundred pounds, and his income is twelve thousand a year. Our bore is also great in mystery. He believes, with an exasperating appearance of profound meaning, that you saw Parkins last Sunday?—Yes, you did.—Did he say anything particular?—No, nothing particular.—Our bore is surprised at that.—Why?—Nothing. ”

“ After contemplating the building for a minute - or, say a minute and a half, not more - our bore proceeded on his way, mechanically repeating, What a national calamity if such an edifice, connected with such associations, should be destroyed by - A man coming towards him in a violent state of agitation completed the sentence, with the exclamation, Fire! ”

“ Of nothing else does he, in nine cases out of ten, think, talk, or care. And though he may be called a bore by all other classes, what concerns it him? for other classes are just as great bores to him, and he seeks not their company. ”

“ “It is often said that there is no bore like a clever bore. ”

“ Little dreamed those day-laborers, as they broke ground for their rude mill, in that solitary wilderness, that the results of that day’s labor would give employment to thousands and tens of thousands of such implements as they then used; that the one spadeful of red dirt, at which they gazed so intently, at the bottom of which a few yellow bits of shining dust appeared, was soon to exert a mysterious, a profound influence upon the commerce, the welfare, the destinies of the whole human family. ”

“ No laborer on his farm had worked so many hours or so laboriously, the impression having seemed all the while to abide with him that if he did not labor he would have only eye-service, and nothing would be left him. ”

“ Those monotonous occupations, such as the hellish one of lift-man, ought not to be human occupations, and they will not be such some day. Meanwhile, they rack by boredom people to whom has not been given the free expanse of the pedlar. ”

“ Higher wages were paid, but the scarcity of food made higher prices, and men were little better off. Many laborers, indeed, declined to work at all, becoming tramps,—what were known as "sturdy beggars,"—or haunting the forests as bandits. ”

“ Accustomed to griping hunger and short allowances of food, when better days came, they thought only of enjoying the present, and took no heed of the future. After harvest, with its high wages and cheapness of provision, the laborer frequently became wasteful and improvident. ”

“ The piston placed on some branch of the main tube must be so constructed that on being depressed it closes the natural windways through the main bore and opens others into the additional piston length. ”

“ In other words, the laborers acquired a full title to the rude garments in which they clothed themselves, the rude implements which they used in the chase, their weapons, canoes, etc., long before they ever made farms. ”

“ You ought to put in a kick to the foundry about that. You're wasting time, because the workmen have to run the boring-mill slower to keep from breaking the cutting tool. When the core is true, the borer hits a uniform note—there! ”

“ And I must pack it on my back, about a mile, up to our shanty, and work with wire and pipes and fire, the while I quote warm things from Dante.
THE LAND OF BORES
In the country of the bores people never shut the doors, and they leave the windows open, so you're always catching cold; and they lean against your breast while relating moldy jest that had long and flowing whiskers when by Father Adam told. In the country of the bores people carry sample ores, and they talk of mines prolific till you buy ten thousand shares ”

“ If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; ”

“ At the beginning of this marvelous era it was natural to expect, and it was expected, that labor-saving inventions would lighten the toil and improve the condition of the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power of producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the past. ”

“ I do not wish you trouble either, but, following the philosophy of the peasant, I will repeat simply ‘live more’ and try not to be much bored; ”

“ And so, in the poor-farm, we, who are yet unburied, are other. You have heard me chatter about the hell of the longboat. That is a pleasant diversion in life compared with the poor-farm. The food, the filth, the abuse, the bullying, the--the sheer animalness of it! ”

“ Up and out every morning of his life at or before daylight,—hard at work at the thousand-and-one-tasks of a farm until it was too dark to tell an axe from a spade,—how could he endure this cruel deprivation of all that made life worth living? ”

“ Gold commissioners, bankers, squatters, swells, come to see the rush; burly diggers just as they had left their work, shanty-keepers, bullies, loafers, and niggers, all pierced with cold and impelled by hunger, that great leveller of distinctions, jostled and pressed eagerly to satisfy the cravings of their appetites. ”

“ He would have seen those slaves of the lamp of knowledge taking on themselves the traditional curse, those muscles of iron and sinews of steel making the poorest labourer's life a holiday, in which every high quality and noble impulse could have scope to grow. ”

“ Then there were young farmers and old farmers, with smock frocks, brown great-coats, drab great-coats, red worsted comforters, leather-leggings, wonderful shaped hats, hunting-whips, and rough sticks, standing about in groups, or talking noisily together on the tavern steps, or paying and receiving huge amounts of greasy wealth, with the assistance of such bulky pocket-books that when they were in their pockets it was apoplexy to get them out, and when they were out, it was spasms to get them in again. ”

“ They throve, and we at home did thrive.
—This lusty Lamb of all my store
Is all that is alive;
And now I care not if we die,
And perish all of poverty.
Six Children, Sir! had I to feed;
Hard labour in a time of need! ”

“ After the endurance of a week's delirium, madness, and unconsciousness, they generally find themselves, when robbed of the greater portion of their hard-got earnings, thrust upon the world penniless, wretched, dispirited, and sick, to seek employment and re-enact the same scenes of solitary penance and wild debauchery. ”

“ A word to the 35,000 now tramping the streets of this great city, with hands in pockets, gazing listlessly about you at the evidence of wealth and pleasure of which you own no part, not sufficient even to purchase yourself a bit of food with which to appease the pangs of hunger now knawing at your vitals. ”

“ And so I, in the sober afternoon of life, when its sun, if not high, is still warm, have bought me a few acres of land in the broad, still country, and bearing thither my household treasures, have resolved to steal from the city's labors and anxieties at least one day in each week, wherein to revive as a farmer, the memories of my childhood's humble home. ”

“ It is very hard, when they have disposed of their wares, and begin to enjoy the lightness of their load, and the goodly look of the gold and silver they carry in their bosoms, to be stopped in the dark and robbed, or to wake in the morning and find their pouch as empty as their packs. ”

“ They had money and land, and their prosperity increased year by year more and more. But ill-luck comes like a thief in the night, as their wealth had increased so did it again decrease, year by year, and at last the miller could hardly call the mill in which he lived, his own. ”

“ What energy of the personal soul is exercised in a mill-hand, a tea-packer, a slop-tailor, or the watcher of a thread in a machine? How can a man or woman engaged in such labour for ten hours a day at subsistence wage enjoy a fully developed life? ”

“ It is the mine from which must be drawn the ore that labor fashions. It is the substance to which labor gives the form. And, hence, when labor cannot satisfy its wants, may we not with certainty infer that it can be from no other cause than that labor is denied access to land? ”

“ I found you drunk in my birch, and it is well known that these are your customary habits. You are also a pauper. All property, everything that goes to support life, in these parts, of any amount, comes by the hard work of somebody,—either bone labor or brain labor,—the labor of those who now possess it, or of those from whom they inherited it. ”