He is hard to cure, but worse to endure. Sunshine has no brightness for him. Love has no charms. Beauty has no smiles. Flowers have no fragrance. All is desert to him; and alas! he is desert to all.
II. The Story-Teller.—He is ever and anon telling his anecdotes and stories, until they become as dull as an old newspaper handled for days together. He seldom enters your house or forms one of a company but you hear from him the same oft-repeated tales. He may sometimes begin on a new track, but he soon merges into the old. You are inclined to say, “You have told me that before;” but respect to the person who speaks, or a sense of good manners, restrains, so you are under the necessity of enduring the unwelcome repetition.
I have known this talker, again and again, rise from his seat with an intention of going because of a “pressing engagement,” and yet he has stood, with hat in hand, for a further half-hour, telling the same stories which on similar occasions he had told before. I knew what was coming, and wished that he had left when he rose at first to do so, rather than afflict me with the same worn-out threadbare tales of three-times-three repetition in my ears.
I have thought, Whence this failing? Whether from loss of memory or from the fact that these things have been so often repeated that, when once begun, they instinctively and in the very order in which they are laid in the mind find an irresistible outlet from the mouth: like a musical-box, when wound up and set a-going, goes on and on, playing the same old tunes which one has heard a hundred times, and which it has played ever since a musical-box it has been.
I am inclined to think, however uncharitable my thinking may seem, that this is the chief cause of his fault. I think so because I have frequently noticed him saying as soon as he has begun, “Have not I told you this before?” and I have answered, “Yes, you have;” still he has gone on with the old yarn, telling it precisely in the same way as before; as the aforesaid instrument plays its old tunes without variation right through to the end.
The affliction would not be so bad to bear if he cut his stories short; but, unfortunately, he does not, and I verily believe cannot, any more than the parson who has repeated his sermons a hundred times can curtail, or leave out some of the old to substitute new. Not only so; another addition to the burden one has to endure is, that he always repeats his stories with such apparent self-satisfaction—a smile here, a laugh there, a “ha-ha-ha” in another place; at the same time you feel he is a bore, and wish his old saws were a hundred miles away.
One has been reminded, in hearing him talk, of what Menander says about the Dodonian brass, that if a man touched it only once it would continue ringing the whole day in the same monotonous tone. Thus this talker, touch him on the story-key, and he plays away until you are jaded in listening.
“His copious stories, oftentimes begun,
End without audience, and are never done.”
Is there a remedy for this talker? I fear not. He has practised so long—for he generally is sixty or seventy years old—that little hope can be entertained of his cure. He will have to wear out. This, however, you can do for yourself; only go into his company once, and you will not be afflicted with his repetition; and if he would go into the same company only once, it would secure to him a more enduring reputation.
Cowper, in his day, it would seem, met with such a talker as I have been describing. He thus refers to him:—