The Missing-Word Bore

"The Missing-Word Bore" by Charles Battell Loomis is a satirical work that humorously critiques the conventions of conversation and the art of storytelling. Through witty prose and clever observations, Loomis explores the idea of how missing words can transform dialogue and impact communication. The book playfully engages readers with its whimsical approach to language and the absurdity of certain social interactions, making it a delightful read for those who appreciate wordplay and lighthearted satire.

• Short story

								
Then, there’s that bore whose thoughts come by freight, and the
freight is always late. You know what’s coming, that is, you can
imagine the way-bill, but he won’t let you help him to make better
time, and runs his train of thought as if it were on a heavy grade.

He starts to tell a story, blinking his red eyes, meanwhile, as if he
thought that they supplied the motive power for his tongue. To make
listening to him the harder, he generally tells a very old story.

“One day, William Makepeace--er-er--”

“Thackeray,” you say, intending to help him. Of course it is
Thackeray, and he was going to tell about the novelist and the
Bowery boy; but he is so pig-headed that he shifts on to another
track.

“No; Dickens, Charles Dickens. One day, when Charles Dickens was at
work on ‘Bleak’--er--er--”

“‘Bleak House’?” you say.

“No!” he snaps; “‘Dombey and Son.’ One day, when Charles Dickens was
at work on ‘Dombey and Son,’ he was approached by his biographer,
John--er--er--”

“Forster?”

“No; it wasn’t his biographer, either; it was Edmund Yates.”

You now take a gleeful pleasure in seeing how hopelessly you can make
him tangle himself up by the refusal of your help, but he doesn’t
care. He’ll tell it in his own words, though the heavens fall and
though he starts a hundred stories.

“Charles Dickens had a very loud way of--er--er--”

“Dressing?”

“No, no! He had a loud way of talking, and he and Edmund--er--er--”

“Yates?”

“No, sir; Edmund Spenser.”

Of course this is arrant nonsense on the face of it, but he won’t
admit that he’s made pi of his story, and he goes on:

“Edmund said that Charles--”

“Dickens?”

“No, sir; Charles Reade. Edmund said that Charles Reade thought
George--er--”

“Meredith?”

“No; hang it all! George Eliot. He thought that George Eliot never
wrote a better book than ‘Silas’--er--”

“‘Marner’?”

“Not at all! ‘Silas Lapham.’”

Now, if you are merciful, or if you are refinedly cruel, either one,
you will allow him to finish his story in peace, and, like as not,
he will start all over again by saying: “I guess I inadvertently got
hold of the wrong name at the beginning. It was not Dickens, as you
said, but Thackeray. Thackeray was one day walking along the Bowery
when he met a typical--” And so on to the bitter end.

For the sake of speed, do not ever interrupt his kind!
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