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.

"A director of the power of steam," said I, "and an explorer of the
wonders of Iscander's city willing to hold the candle to Mr Bos. I will
tell you what, you are too good for this world, let us hope you will have
your reward in the next."

I breakfasted and asked for my bill; the bill amounted to little or
nothing--half-a-crown I think for tea-dinner, sundry jugs of ale, bed and
breakfast. I defrayed it, and then inquired whether it would be possible
for me to see the inside of the church.

"Oh yes," said Pritchard. "I can let you in, for I am churchwarden and
have the key."

The church was a little edifice of some antiquity, with a little wing and
without a spire; it was situated amidst a grove of trees. As we stood
with our hats off in the sacred edifice, I asked Pritchard if there were
many Methodists in those parts.

"Not so many as there were," said Pritchard, "they are rapidly
decreasing, and indeed dissenters in general. The cause of their
decrease is that a good clergyman has lately come here, who visits the
sick and preaches Christ, and in fact does his duty. If all our
clergymen were like him there would not be many dissenters in Ynis Fon."

Outside the church, in the wall, I observed a tablet with the following
inscription in English.

Here lieth interred the body of Ann, wife of Robert Paston, who
deceased the sixth day of October, Anno Domini.

1671.

P.
R. A.

"You seem struck with that writing?" said Pritchard, observing that I
stood motionless, staring at the tablet.

"The name of Paston," said I, "struck me; it is the name of a village in
my own native district, f