In preparation for my first sitting up, my mother went to buy some white cashmere to make a “Nightingale” for me. The clerk had just cut a length from a piece and was folding it up for another purchaser, a lady in whom my mother recognized a friend, whose young daughter had died of the fever the day before; the cashmere was for _her_ last garment! Shuddering, my mother hurried from the shop. “Not from that piece of cloth, no!” She would find her material elsewhere! As soon as I could be moved, the doctor suggested change of air. On a mild day of early spring my mother and I, with Marion Crawford for escort, left Rome. I remember that the peach trees were all in bloom. “Orvieto is the place indicated,” Marion declared. “Has not its wine been prescribed? I have an acquaintance at the Aquila Bianca who has the best rooms and best macaroni in the town.” Memories of that fortnight at Orvieto remain, when so much is forgotten. The fine cathedral, the lovely Fra Angelico and Signorelli paintings, the Etruscan tombs, the view of the Valley of the Tiber and the Umbrian Mountains, the well of St. Patrizio, with its winding stairway cut from the rock for water-carrying donkeys, my mother’s delight in my renewed health, and Crawford’s extraordinary personality coloring everything with the roseate glow of his _joie de vivre_. “To-night, I will make you, my aunt, a dish whose like you have never tasted!” he exclaimed one evening, when the macaroni was scorched, no lettuce was to be had, and it looked as if we must go to bed fasting. He called for white bread, olive oil, salt, pepper, and vinegar and compounded what he called “a bread salad.” “Impossible to have anything better! Good wine, good oil, good company; what more do you want?” he cried in triumph, as we praised his dish. We adjourned to the terrace of the poor little inn. “We only lack music,” some one suggested. “I will sing you the song taught me by Amerigo, the old contadino, whose vines I helped prune this morning.” Crawford put a new string on his guitar, tuned the instrument, and sang one of those touching songs of “the people” that are more melodious and more dramatic in Italy than in any other country. “_Sor Colonello, me dia il congedo, per andar ne mia ca’, per andar ne mia ca’,_ _Per veder la mia amorosa che in letto se ne sta!_” Later, by his novels, Crawford was to teach the English reading world to love the simple Italian ways. He taught me so much of Italy that I am glad to find, from an old letter, that he learned something that was worth while from me,--the American point of view. I was frankly horrified at the lack of purpose in his life. This handsome, gifted, brilliant man of twenty-four seemed perfectly content to live at home, idle, and supported by his mother. Crawford’s mother, for years “a leader” of the Anglo-American colony, was much beloved.