AustLit

'Dear cities and lovely ladies, memories of skylines and suppers, of teeming strasses and boulevards, of whispers and wonderments with saxophones drooling, of deceits and rare drenches with ice in the glasses...the reminiscential sic transit pangs of the man when hairdresser Time is plucking the last stalks from his cranium.

Well, I have seen a good deal of the world; doubtless I may behold a good deal more, but without alteration to the credo...the greatest town is the one where abide the most women who can endure my society. I have always associated cities with dear ones: they have given these masses of tradition and stone a special, nippy identity. What other identity they may possess I leave to be scooped up and ladled out by the traveller-authors and gazeteers.'