Dynamo Doit, teaching his class of industrious correspondents, would probably write them, with a picture of himself shaking his fist to emphasize his point: 'Do not try to exhaust your subject. You will only exhaust your audience. Never talk for more than three minutes on any topic. Wear a wrist-watch _and keep your eye on it_. If at the end of _three minutes_ you cannot change the subject, tell one of the following anecdotes.' And I am quite sure also that Professor Doit would write to his class: 'Whatever topic you discuss, _discuss it originally_. Be apt. Be bright. Be pertinent. Be _yourself_. Remember always that it is not so much what you say as the _way you say it_ that will charm your listener. Think clearly. Illustrate and drive home your meaning with illuminating figures--the sort of thing that your hearer will remember and pass on to others as "another of So-and-so's _bon-mots_." Here you will find that reading the "Wit and Humor" column in newspapers and magazines is a great help. And speak plainly. Remember that unless you are _heard_ you cannot expect to _interest_. On this point, dear student, I can do no better than repeat Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son: "Read what Cicero and Quintilian say of enunciation."'
But perhaps, after all, enunciation is no more important than renunciation; and the first virtue that we who do not wish to be bores must practise is abstemiousness of self. I know it is hard, but I do not mean total abstinence. A man who tried to converse without his _I's_ would make but a blind stagger at it. This short and handsome word (as Colonel Roosevelt might have said) is not to be utterly discarded without danger of such a silence as would transform the experimenter into a Bore Negative of the most negative description. Practically deprived of speech, he would become like a Charlie Wax endowed with locomotion and provided with letters of introduction. But one can at least curb the pronoun, and, with shrewd covert glances at his wrist-watch, confine the personally conducted tour into and about Myself within reasonable limits. Let him say bravely in the beginning, 'I will not talk about Myself for more than thirty minutes by my wrist-watch'; then reduce it to twenty-five; then to twenty--and so on to the irreducible minimum; and he will be surprised to feel how his popularity increases with leaps and bounds at each reduction--provided, of course, that he finds anything else to talk about.