My wife and I have always enjoyed traveling by sea，and last year we decided to go on a Mediterranean journey. Although our holiday was rather expensive we thought that the high standard of accommodation， the first-class food and the many interesting places we saw were well worth the price we paid.
We found that most of the other passengers were friendly and interesting， but there was one man， a Mr. James， who irritated and annoyed us. Whatever subject we talked about， it seemed that he was an expert at it. He had， apparently， read more books， visited more countries and studied more languages， than anyone else had. After a few days， we ate our meals in silence， because nobody wanted to begin a conversation that would soon be taken over by this man.
Then my wife had an idea. She suggested that we might think of an unusual subject， look it up in an encyclopedia and then talk about it at dinner. If it were an unusual subject， Mr. James could not possibly know anything about it. The subject we chose was “English Agriculture in the Eleventh Century.” At dinner that night we discussed this subject with great enthusiasm. Mr. James was silent. We realized we had at last come to find something he knew nothing about.
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