“Have you travelled then much about England?” said I.
“No,” he replied. “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 shoemakers 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. But allow me to ask you in what capacity you went abroad?”
“As engineer to various steamships,” said Pritchard.