Home-keeping youths have homely wits
This line emphasizes the importance of travel. He, who has never stirred out of his native village or town, is bound to be uniformed and remain homely, i.e., plain in his wits. By moving out of our narrow native surroundings, one comes in contact with new things and different types of people whose manners and modes of thinking differ considerably from his own. This contact of mind with mind will sharpen his intellect. Foreign travel has become an essential part of higher education in many countries. There is a Sanskrit couplet which places bookish knowledge in the third place, after travelling. Pope in a trenchant couplet has gone to the length of placing a widely travelled fool at a higher pedestal than a scholar loaded with the lumber of scholastic learning: Better a fool that has been to Rome than many a wise that stayed at home. Apart from seeing various things, mountains, seas, old monuments and new structures, which no book can teach him with the same effectiveness as a first-hand contact with the living reality, travelling is advantageous in many more ways. It brings about a welcome change in our mode of thinking and in our attitude towards things and people. We see ourselves our customs and country, our religion and institutions, in a new perspective. We shed our prejudice and pride. Those, who have never ventured out native land, suffer from false patriotic pride and usually suffer from the frog-in-well mentality, resting content with their knowledge of the world and their false sense others. A better knowledge of the variety of life and manners of the people of the world gives us a correct knowledge, sharpens our minds, broadens our sympathies, makes us more tolerant, and removes the false sense of patriotic pride by proper understanding of the world.
