Of the many questions I have asked in Italy none has been so unsatisfactorily answered as "Do you let your young folk read that book and what effect does it have?" No one could think of calling Soffici a pornographic writer. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that he is one of the most respected and admired of all the young school of Italian writers, and yet there are passages in the book now under discussion coarser and more vulgar than any in the "Satyricon." Despite this it is not a circumstance to the recent book of a seventeen-year-old girl of Rome, Margherita Emplosi Gherardi, entitled "Il Nudo nelle Anime." It is dedicated to all those who deny that the youthful mind has not the capacity, discernment, liberty, and daring to envisage and interpret the painful mysteries of the human soul. There are few things more disgusting in literature, "Gamiana" excluded, than the sketch entitled "The Impure Hour," for women only. His remaining books, "Statue e Fantocci" ("Statues and Dolls"), are made up chiefly of critical reviews, many of which have appeared in journals. They show that the writer has a mastery of literary technic and an understanding of modern art and literature creditable to himself and to his country. He can be satirical, caustic, sarcastic, but he is never brutal. He can be an ardent admirer, a valorous champion, a sympathetic interpreter, a critical friend, and a prejudiced judge, but he is never an implacable, insensate enemy, nor a literary fiend. Moreover, one does not gather from his writings that he is what is called the "whole thing" from the literary standpoint. Signor Soffici has got some bad habits from Papini. Among these are: saying old things as if they never had been said before; taking on an air of complacency after the delivery of a sentiment or a conviction in no wise epoch-making; believing that all his geese are swans and the geese of others decoys; that his every thought is a jewel which people are frenzied to possess unless they are too stupid; and saying trivial things with the subtly conveyed insinuation that the reader should, if he is perspicacious and cultured, find a deep significance in them. He is yet a long way from his full stature, but he is growing.