Belgium is home to two main linguistic communities: the Dutch-speaking Flemish Community, which constitutes about 60 percent of the population, and the French-speaking Community, which constitutes about 40 percent of the population.

November 3, 1872, Sam wrote to his sister-in-law, Susan Crane.

“If you & Theodore will come over here in the Spring with Livy & me & spend the Summer, you shall see a country that is so beautiful that you will be obliged to believe in fairy-land;—there is nothing like it elsewhere on the globe” [MTP, drop-in letters].

“I would a good deal rather live here if I could get the rest of you over” [MTL 5: 213].

Isaac Gewirtz, in Mark Twain A Skeptic's Progress, writes of Twain's view of the French Revolution:

The Quaker City sailed through the Greek Islands August 13-17, 1867.  It stopped at the harbor of Athens August 14-15, during which Twain broke quarantine to visit the Acropolis.