Many of his short stories--such as "Novelle d'Ambo i Sessi" ("Stories of Both Sexes"), "Le Chicche di Noretta" ("The Gewgaws of Little Nora")--have elicited great praise. To-day Panzini has the reputation of being one of the most gifted writers of Italy. He has come to his patrimony very slowly. Without being in the smallest way like George Meredith or Henry James, his writings have experienced a reception similar to theirs in so far as it has been said of them that they are hard to understand. It is difficult for a foreigner to give weight to this accusation. The reader who once gets a familiarity with them becomes an enthusiast. To him Panzini is one of the most readable of all Italian writers. To be sure, if one reads "Xantippe" it is to be expected that more or less will be said about Socrates and about the customs and habits of Athens of that day. The same is true of Diogenes and his lantern. It is also likely that when a man of literary training and taste wanders about the country, writing of his encounters, he will be likely to write of people and things, which, when others read them, will presuppose a certain culture, but the reader who has the misfortune to lack it need not hesitate to read the books of Signor Panzini. He will have a certain degree of it after he has read them and he will get possessed of it without effort. It is not at all unlikely that Signor Panzini writes his stories and novels in much the same way as he writes his dictionaries, namely, laboriously. His later writings have some indication of having been thrown off in a white heat of creative passion without preparation or conscious premeditation, but most of his books bear the hallmarks of careful planning, methodical execution, painstaking revision, and careful survey after completion that the writer may be sure that his creation exposed to the gaze and criticism of his fellow beings shall be as perfect as he can make it both from his own knowledge and from the knowledge of others assimilated and integrated by him. The position which Panzini holds in the Italian world of letters to-day is the index of the protest against the writings of D'Annunzio. Panzini is sane, normal, human, gentle, kindly. He sees the facts of life as they are; he fears the ascendancy of materialism; his hopes are that man's evolutionary progress shall be spiritual, and he does not anticipate the advent of a few supermen who shall administer the affairs of the planet.