Will you hear my lesson? Although I have not been out of school very long I find I have forgotten a lot and I have really enjoyed reading about the very early days of Rome, of the Etruscan lords, the raids of the Sabines and the Celts, and the sack of Rome by the Gauls, the starting of the republic with the plebs and patricians, about Hannibal, the Punic wars, and the Macedonian wars, and all kinds of wars. Checkers was tickled to death with my anonymous letter signed “Brown Eyes.” He didn’t say a word, but has smiled ever since receiving it. All women, he declares, are devils. I notice, however, like the sailors, he discovers a pretty girl in every port. He’s as fickle, looking this way and that, as a blade of grass in a high wind. I just wrote some more nonsense, supposed to be from an Italian girl who had seen him on the street and had fallen in love with the handsome American boy. I wish he would fall in love with Sybil, however, but they are such good friends that I do not so far see a glimmer of hope. Now I am going to bed, but instead of dreaming of something pleasant, for instance of you, I shall be wide awake and my head buzzing with history and dates,--Goths taking the city of Florence,--where we go tomorrow,--the visit of Charlemagne and the story of the Countess Mathilde who ruled for over forty years, of endless feuds and battles and Guelphs and Ghibellines of long ago. Now perhaps I can go to sleep, having written you all this, and if you don’t remember your history, you had better read it up. As one of Checkers’ numerous girls once declared, “You are so fascinating I can’t stop I writing!” This must be my case for here is a very long letter. I wish we could stop in Rome on the way north, but shall expect you for over Sunday in Florence. * * * * * A. D. TO POLLY _Rome, May._ I feel lost and strange and don’t know what to do without you. Only yesterday we were driving together in Florence across the river, up the hillside, to that little church high above the valley where we had our photographs taken together beneath the gnarled cypress. Then we came rattling down the zigzag roadway, past the fruit trees in blossom, and had tea and chocolate and beer, each according to his taste, at the pastry cook’s, and then went back to the hotel and stood on the little balcony, looking over the gleaming river Arno, and beyond to the setting sun. This pin I enclose for you--a baby Leo, a little relative of the Lion of St. Mark’s, which you should be wearing, now that you will soon be in Venice. I bought it today in a little shop as I was toiling up toward the Pincian, where I listened to the music and watched the people and the carriages go round and round. Groups of red-robed Bavarian student priests and straggling bands of monks, brown-cowled, with sandaled feet and ropes of rattling beads about their waists, and children, rolling hoops so merrily.