Think of it! The middle of September--and already it seems as if Rome were taking on its preparations and spinning its web for the catching of foreigners. One or two of the shops in the Via Condotti and the Piazza di Spagna have taken down the shutters, and visitors have already been seen looking into the windows. Next the antiquity dealers will open, then the hotels, and after that--hurrah! I shall hope to see you in New York. The past day you have been constantly in my thoughts and my heart. Let me see, where have I taken you? To the Embassy in the morning, into the city to do some commissions, down the Quattro Fontane, down the steep hill past the Barberini, cutting the corner of the piazza with its glorious Triton blowing the fountain of spray high into the air, and into the narrow little Triton Street--the wretched artery that joins the two Romes--with its crowd of carriages and carts and people moving slowly, and then to the right along the Due Macelli, and so to the sunny Piazza di Spagna. Later in the afternoon while sitting in my rooms, Jonkheer Jan came to see me, looking the same as ever, thin, tall, and blonde, and stayed on till I was sure he would be late for his dinner. Do you remember how he would come in late to see you, always in a hurry, with smiles and excuses and profuse apologies, twisting his ring around his finger? The British secretaries have gone to Frascati in a body to stay till repairs have been made on the Embassy. So I went out there “to dine and sleep” as they call it in England, and enjoyed the little outing very much. This morning I took an early train and came down the hillside, between the groves of grotesque olive trees and across the endless rolling Campagna half hidden in mauve-colored mist, with its unholy charm, its lonely skeletons of towers and procession of aqueducts, the great graveyard of the mighty Past. How I should like to be in Leicestershire with you, though. You know I feel like saying that the trip through the Trossachs, the visits to Holland House and Knole Park, and the other things which you haven’t been able to do this year, we can do some time together! I am almost afraid to add, “Can’t we, shan’t we?” for fear you may answer back at once “Indeed no! What _are_ you talking about?” Isn’t the way they do things in England funny? The conventions are amusing for a time--and pleasant too,--then they become chill and monotonous, like the endless green hedges and woods and parks of lovely England. But one gets tired, after seeing them day after day, year after year, and I used to ache for a patch of American landscape with its sunburnt yellow corn, its brown earth, its zigzag snake fences of the south, and its whitewashed shanties with the real good old-fashioned negro loafing about in tattered trousers and coat.