... Pictures and observations, set down by a woman's pen dear to The Woman's Voice, on a flying visit to the United States and Venezuela... What might Mrs. Aida Saab Assaf have to say of her quick impressions of those far-off... yet near countries?

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Here is New York looking down upon us in its grandeur and might. It is divided into four great boroughs, among them the borough of Manhattan, where we stayed, and which is the beating heart of New York. Its broad streets are surely unique in their orderly, straight plan and their consecutive numbering. Transportation is provided by motorcars, small and large, and by the fast underground trains that run without interruption. As for its towering buildings, unequaled in their hugeness, they are known as skyscrapers, and it is enough for me to mention the Empire State, the tallest building in the world, whose height reaches one thousand four hundred and seventy-two feet, comprising one hun-dred and two stories. I went up to its summit, and the sights of the mighty city were laid open before me from that towering height — I leave it to the imagination of my gracious readers to picture them.

One glance at the display windows of the shops proves the ability of the salesmen of that country to work upon the buyer's mind by ways of temptation and allure. And it seems to me that in their tempting and alluring they take us — we women — as their target. And how many great stores there are, such as Macy's, for example, which requires the service of thousands of workers, women and men, and a visit to which takes days, especially as its many departments contain everything a person needs — clothing, foodstuffs, and the rest.

New York today is rightly considered the capital of the world, for the human beings it gathers, of every race, color, and tongue. Its newspapers appear in dozens of languages, and its restaurants represent most of the nationalities of the world.

Some may imagine that living in New York is impossible, given its well-known din; but the noise is confined to the district of Manhattan and to its centers of work, while in the residential districts complete calm and quiet prevail. How beautiful those districts are — completed by trees, adorned with flowers, and bathed in an air of cleanliness and

order. Their buildings are of one height, marked by a stamp of simplicity, and provided with every means of comfort. They are made more beautiful still by their inhabitants' knowledge of social duty — no horn to fray the nerves, no radio's sound to disturb the neighbors' rest, no prying or meddling in other people's affairs, no shouting, no annoyance...

In a country teeming with millions of human beings there must be centers of amusement and recreation for the refreshment of the spirit, and these abound in New York. Coney Island — the great city of amusements — brings together childhood and old age in its programs of entertainment. Some of the public parks, too, are famous far and wide — Central Park, for instance, with its artificial lakes, its zoological garden, and the rest; and Rockefeller Center, which people seek out for skating on artificial ice. Here, in this pleasure-ground as in others, the American mentality shows its inborn love of gaiety and of life, and its refusal to bow to helplessness and renunciation. Look at that old woman whose head is crowned with white hair, beside a little girl not yet six years old, taking the same skating lesson — defying the notion common among us that the enjoyment of life is reserved to childhood and youth. And how the American mentality won my admiration and esteem for its respect for laws and regulations: no sooner had I read, in one of the public places, a notice saying that spitting on the ground and throwing papers is an offense against the laws of health and society, than I found the place the very extreme of cleanliness and order.

New York is not rich in centers of amusement and recreation alone; it contains as well what satisfies a person's intellectual and spiritual desires: its museums, its laboratories, and its libraries are many, and all of them aim at widening the horizon of knowledge and learning.

The Statue of Liberty, the skyscrapers, the many bridges — first among them the Washington Bridge — the long tunnels underground and under-water, the United Nations building and its political importance: all proclaim the grandeur of mighty New York, and testify to the energy and solidarity of its people, and to the government's watchfulness over the interests of its citizens.

By train to Washington

After spending two weeks in New York, we went by railroad train to Washington, the capital — and how easy is the travel between it and New York, for a passenger train runs between them exactly every hour, night and day. We reached the longed-for city in four hours' time, and it was night. So on the morning of the