Most people tire of a lecture in ten minutes; clever people can do it in five. Sensible people never go to lectures at all. But the people who do go to a lecture and who get tired of it, presently hold it as a sort of grudge against the lecturer personally. In reality his sufferings are worse than theirs.

Leacock’s joke turns the familiar complaint about boring lectures into a satire of audience psychology and academic performance. He sketches a hierarchy—ordinary, clever, and “sensible” people—only to undercut it by noting that those who attend and become bored often personalize their discomfort, blaming the lecturer rather than the situation. The final reversal—“his sufferings are worse than theirs”—shifts sympathy to the speaker, who must endure the visible failure of holding attention and the social hostility that follows. The passage wryly captures the mutual misery of public speaking: boredom breeds resentment, and resentment magnifies the lecturer’s anxiety and humiliation.