"When I have travelled it has chiefly been
across the sea to foreign places."
"But what foreign places have you visited?" said I.
"I have visited," said Pritchard, "Constantinople, Alexandria, and
some other cities in the south latitudes."
"Dear me," said I, "you have seen some of the most celebrated
places in the world - and yet you were silent, and said nothing
about your travels whilst that fellow Bos was pluming himself at
having been at such places as Northampton and Worcester, the haunts
of shoe-makers and pig-jobbers."
"Ah," said Pritchard, "but Mr Bos has travelled with edification;
it is a fine thing to have travelled when one has done so with
edification, but I have not. There is a vast deal of difference
between me and him - he is considered the 'cutest man in these
parts, and is much looked up to."
"You are really," said I, "the most modest person I have ever known
and the least addicted to envy. Let me see whether you have
travelled without edification."
I then questioned him about the places which he had mentioned, and
found he knew a great deal about them, amongst other things he
described Cleopatra's needle, and the At Maidan at Constantinople
with surprising exactness.
"You put me out," said I; "you consider yourself inferior to that
droving fellow Bos, and to have travelled without edification,
whereas you know a thousand times more than he, and indeed much
more than many a person who makes his five hundred a year by going
about lecturing on foreign places, but as I am no flatterer I will
tell you that you have a fault which will always prevent your
rising in this world, you have modesty; those who have modesty
shall have no advancement, whilst those who can blow their own horn
lustily, shall be made governors.
