Fortunately the world's standard of what is interesting varies, or there would be an appalling monotony in its circles, but it is understood that you must be celebrated, or notorious, or well advertised or cheeky and even dishonest, if it is on a magnificent scale. At any rate you must take yourself seriously and get a swelled head.
Each Interesting carries about with him his own barrel organ on which he grinds out his little tune, not always so great a tune as he honestly thinks, but still it is his very own. You may have all the virtues enumerated in the dictionary, but if you have not done something, or said something, or been something, and if you are only a well-meaning, law-abiding citizen and regularly pay your bills, a humdrum virtue which the hard-up Interesting occasionally ignores, then you had better give up and retire to the dull society to which you belong.
In studying the Interesting, one discovers that they do not always carry their credentials on the outside. Sometimes, it is humiliating to confess it, one nearly mistakes them for the other kind; still, it is always an honour to sit on the outskirts of a Great Mind, and humbly wonder in what forgotten corner genius has so triumphantly hidden itself. However, an uninteresting celebrity is quite a different affair from the uninteresting pure and simple, who are never asked to meet anybody and certainly not to meals.
There was once, so we were taught at school, an age of stone and an age of iron. After much study I have decided that we have arrived at the age of Lions. Not the four-legged, dangerous kind, but the two-legged ones who drink tea and nibble biscuits. The analogy is even more solemnly striking for they both have enormous heads. The lion is evolved from the Interesting. First you have to be interesting, and then you must practise roaring, modestly at first, but not too modestly; then louder and louder until society simply can't ignore you, you make so much noise, and so you become a lion, and in these days it must be a very pleasant business to be a lion, the only drawback being that the supply rather exceeds the demand. However, no matter how excellent a thing is, there is sure to be some trifling drawback.