linen sweet for at least ten years from the day they were gathered. We never felt the summer had really come till the 24th of June, when the Feast of John the Baptist was kept in and around the Church of St. John the Evangelist. On the eve the Piazza was always the scene of a great fair, the only one held in Rome, during the whole year, except that of the “Befana”[14] in the heart of winter, on the eve of the Epiphany. Of course the “Eve of St. John” is the midsummer eve that was regarded with special and superstitious veneration not only by the pagans of Southern Europe, but by our own Teutonic and Scandinavian ancestors as well, from the times of the Druids themselves; for all it has been the festival of fire—because, I imagine, people wanted to scare away the dead who are supposed to leave their graves and. revisit their old haunts on that night, but still more, in the beginning of man-made worships, to render homage to the sun at the moment of his supreme triumph during those two or three days of midsummer. The bonfires were the great feature of the Roman fair; scores of them were lighted in the broad Piazza, and the boys and young men chased each other through them, trying to clear the flames at a leap and screaming out unintelligible old songs that probably served their ancestors for charms. The Feast of St. John is the first day on which it is considered safe to eat fresh figs, and the booths around the Piazza were piled up with baskets of these. We used to get the big purple ones, bursting with crimson syrup, some weeks earlier, but the Romans do not consider them as real figs. They are called “Fior di fico”; the pale green sort, with firm rose-coloured pulp and holding each its drop of amber gum on the tip, is the real fig, and it stays with us right through the summer. In Tuscany I used to climb into a fig tree (their smooth bark and fat low branches afford delightful seats) and stay there half the day, with a book, eating all I could desire of the ripe fruit and quite forgetting the feast when dinner time came. But when I was young the word “dyspepsia” had not crossed the Atlantic, and it had never dawned on any of us that any one could possibly be upset by such a trifle as mere food, whatever the kind or quantity indulged in! Once, I remember, our faithful “O Sté” of Rocca di Papa was terribly concerned because Marion, aged eight, whom he had conducted to the Fair at Grotia Ferrata, had eaten, as the old man thought, a little too voraciously. “The Signorino has frightened me,” he said tremblingly to our governess as he restored the youngster to her in the evening. “Twelve eggs and half a sucking pig he consumed for his dinner—I could not stop him—but I pray that he may come to no harm!”