You ask me how I pass my days. Up at five and out for a spin on my bicycle. The other day I rode to Ostia and back before lunch. After my ride I get out stores and linen and settle accounts; everything is under lock and key and every _centesimo_ accounted for. Out again for errands and at my writing by half-past ten or eleven. In the morning I write and read the papers in the _salotto_. The Paris edition of the _New York Herald_ has much home news. Lunch at one. After lunch to bed for a siesta. I make a rule to be indoors by eleven in the morning and not to go out again till five in the afternoon. After the siesta, I go up to my workroom on the terrace where there is a thorough draft and no sun, and work there till six, when I go over to the studio to see how J.’s painting goes on. For a little stroll, and then dinner on the terrace at eight. We sit there till bedtime--so nice and cool, the stars very homelike and pleasant, the same constellations that you see, and just now many falling stars. During the years of our life in Rome we spent most of the summers there. As the heat increased, one by one the English and American friends and the more well-to-do Roman friends departed, until our circle narrowed down to a few artists, two or three of the younger diplomats left in charge of the embassies, and certain friendly priests, who found our house a convenient stopping place on the way to the Vatican. I learned more of Rome in these lonely summer months than during the gay season. One August I heard of the death of an elderly American woman whom I had never seen. As I knew her niece, I felt impelled to drive out to the Protestant cemetery to the funeral, for I did not know of any other American in Rome who could be there. The Ambassador, the Consul, the clergymen of both the English and American churches were out of town. When I reached the little chapel, I found a strange clergyman getting into his surplice. The coffin was already there, and a carriage had just stopped containing the niece and the doctor who had attended the dead woman. “I am a stranger. I only arrived this morning,” said the clergyman. “I do not speak the language, I do not know for whom I am to read the service.” “I too am a stranger,” I began. The solitary mourner was entering the chapel. “At least you can tell me,” in an agonized whisper, “whether I am to read the service for a man or a woman.” “Oh, for a woman!” I gasped. I think the memory of that lonely funeral had much to do with our coming home to America for the “last heat” of life. Much as I adored Rome, I did not want to grow old and die there!