Leningrad ... is a city with the gift of timelessness.

There is always a sneer in Las Vegas. The mountains around it sneer. The desert sneers. And arrogant in the middle of its wide valley, dominating those diligent sprawling suburbs, the downtown city sneers like anything.

Basque is one of the world's more alarming languages. Only a handful of adult foreigners, they say, have ever managed to learn it. The Devil tried once and mastered only three words - profanities, I assume.

the personality of St. John's, Newfoundland, hits you like a smack in the face with a dried cod, enthusiastically administered by its citizenry.

To the stern student of affairs, Beirut is a phenomenon, beguiling perhaps, but quite, quite impossible.

Vermonters are not only charmless of manner, on the whole; they are also, as far as I can judge, utterly without pretence, and give the salutary impression that they don't care ten cents whether you are amused, affronted, intrigued, or bored stiff by them. Hardly anybody asked me how I liked Vermont. Not a soul said 'Have a nice day!

Wherever you go in life, you will feel somewhere over your shoulder a pink, castellated shimmering presence, the domes and riggings and crooked pinacles of the Serenissima