_A._ To me this is all a mystery. I certainly must be a greenhorn, as you observe.
_B._ Why, Ansard, my dear fellow, with a book of roads and a gazetteer, I would write a more amusing book of travels than one half which are now foisted on the public. All you have to do is to fill up the chinks.
_A._ All I want to do is to fill up the chinks in my stomach, Barnstaple; for, between you and me, times are rather queer.
_B._ You shall do it, if you will follow my advice. I taught you how to write a fashionable novel, it will be hard, indeed, if I cannot send you up the Rhine. One little expense must be incurred--you must subscribe a quarter to a circulating library, for I wish that what you do should be well done.
_A._ Barnstaple, I will subscribe to--anything.
_B._ Well, then, since you are so reasonable, I will proceed. You must wade through all the various "Journies on the Rhine," "Two Months on the Rhine," "Autumns on the Rhine," &c., which you can collect. This you will find the most tiresome part of your task. Select one as your guide, one who has a reputation; follow his course, not exactly--that I will explain afterwards--and agree with him in everything, generally speaking. Praise his exactitude and fidelity, and occasionally quote him; this is but fair: after you rob a man (and I intend you shall rifle him most completely), it is but decent to give him kind words. All others you must abuse, contradict, and depreciate. Now, there is a great advantage in so doing: in the first place, you make the best writer your friend--he forgets your larcenies in your commendation of him, and in your abuse of others. If his work be correct, so must yours be; he praises it everywhere--perhaps finds you out, and asks you to dine with him.
_A._ How should I ever look at his injured face?
_B._ On the contrary, he is the obliged party--your travels are a puff to his own.
_A._ But, Barnstaple, allowing that I follow this part of your advice, which I grant to be very excellent, how can I contradict others, when they may be, and probably are, perfectly correct in their assertions?
_B._ If they are so, virtue must be its own reward. It is necessary that you write a book of travels, and all travellers contradict each other--_ergo_, you must contradict, or nobody will believe that you have travelled. Not only contradict, but sneer at them.