Game of Norms

National Review is many things, but one of my favorite things it is — and certainly was when I was starting out — is a collection of accents.

The greatest accent of them all, William F. Buckley’s mid-Atlantic, was sadly gone from the corridors and cubicles by the time I arrived. Though there remained the ingredients of it, unbundled, in the well-bred Connecticut and Massachusetts and Westchester and Main Line accents of editors and writers; and of course in the fixed quotient of British accents our fortnightly seems contractually obligated to retain at all times.