"I'm not up to EVERYTHING, Peterkin, as you'll find out ere long,"
replied Jack, with a smile; "but I have been a great reader of
books of travel and adventure all my life, and that has put me up
to a good many things that you are, perhaps, not acquainted with."

"Oh, Jack, that's all humbug. If you begin to lay everything to
the credit of books, I'll quite lose my opinion of you," cried
Peterkin, with a look of contempt. "I've seen a lot o' fellows
that were ALWAYS poring over books, and when they came to try to DO
anything, they were no better than baboons!"

"You are quite right," retorted Jack; "and I have seen a lot of
fellows who never looked into books at all, who knew nothing about
anything except the things they had actually seen, and very little
they knew even about these. Indeed, some were so ignorant that
they did not know that cocoa-nuts grew on cocoa-nut trees!"

I could not refrain from laughing at this rebuke, for there was
much truth in it, as to Peterkin's ignorance.

"Humph! maybe you're right," answered Peterkin; "but I would not
give TUPPENCE for a man of books, if he had nothing else in him."

"Neither would I," said Jack; "but that's no reason why you should
run books down, or think less of me for having read them. Suppose,
now, Peterkin, that you wanted to build a ship, and I were to give
you a long and particular account of the way to do it, would not
that be very useful?"

"No doubt of it," said Peterkin, laughing.