The American man: what of him? -- Anywhere is where you hang your hat -- What is a rhyme? -- Drinking from a cup made cinchy -- On the sidewalk -- Why Robert Frost should receive the Nobel Prize -- Confessions of a wild bore -- The unread book route -- Alphonse Peintre -- Mr. Ex-resident -- Central Park -- No dodo -- Voices in the Biltmore -- Our own Baedeker -- Postal complaints -- Old and precious -- Spatial remarks -- Dinosaur egg -- Upright carpentry -- Crush vs. whip -- Métro gate -- Cancelled -- Morality play -- Obfuscating coverage -- Bryant Park -- John Marquand -- Two heroes -- Doomsday, Mass. -- Grandma Moses -- Spring rain -- Eisenhower's eloquence -- Mostly glass -- Three documents -- Free bee-hours -- Beer can -- Modern art -- The assassination -- T.S. Eliot -- The dogwood tree: a boyhood -- The lucid eye in silver town -- My uncle's death -- Outing: a family anecdote -- Mea culpa: a travel note -- Eclipse -- Poetry from downtroddendom -- Snow from a dead sky -- Franny and Zooey -- Credos and curios -- Beerbohm and others -- Rhyming Max -- No use talking -- Stuffed fox -- Honest horn -- Faith in search of understanding -- Tillich -- More love in the western world -- A foreword for young readers -- Creatures of the air -- Between a wedding and a funeral -- How how it is was -- Grandmaster Nabokov.