If they were emperors, I wanted a better view. Being told they were emperors was no good; I needed to see them. But as quickly as we had spotted them, they spotted us. Sliding on their bellies, two emperors began to rush over.

Steaming up the Adriatic aboard ex-King Farouk's former pleasure boat (now renamed Freedom), Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser arrived last week at the beautiful Yugoslav seaport of Dubrovnik.

We would arrive and go through the civilities a scentmaker expects, sniffing the latest oil he was compounding, pronouncing it too heavy or too light or too musky, or sometimes, to keep him sweet, praising and buying.

The most retweetable word in my data set was the word you. Twitter users want to hear you talk about them, not yourself.