The more of these stories I heard, the more I wanted to hear, for it is notorious that there is no passion so insatiable as curiosity. And when our curiosity is directed towards a useful object, the indulgence of it becomes both proper and beneficial. The world is filled with variety, and this variety is evidently designed by Providence to stimulate our curiosity, so that we may be incited to action and the pursuit of knowledge. In this way I became seized with an irresistible inclination to travel and see the world. My neighbor Timothy Doolittle, who had nobody to tell him stories when he was a boy, on the contrary, never cared to move about, or know how the rest of the world lived, or what was doing out of his own chimney-corner. I believe he never in his life walked further than Roxbury Neck; and if anybody should ask him how big the world was, he would say it extended from Bunker Hill to Brookline! Such magnificent notions of the universe will a man have who never stirs abroad. I could give a long account of my early travels--how they began in very infancy when I first ventured out the front door--how I next rambled down the street, and was amazed to see how large the town was--how I then grew more courageous, and journeyed as far as Faneuil Hall Market; what surprising discoveries I made there; what perilous adventures I met with on the way thither and back--how I next made a still bolder excursion as far as Fort Hill, got overtaken by night, and was brought back by the town crier--how, finally, after a great many hair-breadth escapes and daring exploits, I became so experienced in travelling that I ventured into the country to see what sort of people lived there; and how in a single day I penetrated as far as the Blue Hills, and found the inhabitants of Milton and Dorchester an exceedingly civil, pleasant and good sort of people. I might give the particulars of all these peregrinations at full length, if I had room in these pages. But as it is very probable that most of my readers have travelled the same route and seen pretty much the same things, I have concluded to omit them for the present, and pass on to the narrative of my travels and adventures in foreign countries, which will probably offer more novelty and instruction.