May 10. Two weeks ago I went to Sorrento to visit the Crawfords, then to Venice for a week with Mrs. Gardner. The celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of Torquato Tasso’s death took me to Sorrento. Crawford made the chief address, prefacing it with an apology for his Italian. The Bishop of Sorrento told me this was rather a jest, as Marion’s Italian was more elegant and correct than that of any other speaker. In Venice the attraction was the opening of an exhibition of modern pictures. I found time for my old loves, Titian and Veronese, and took on two new ones, Tintoretto and Carpaccio. I was very comfortable at Marion’s, where he and Bessie were kind as kind. Mrs. Gardner has the Daniel Curtis apartment on the Grand Canal. John Sargent had been staying there and he had recommended Mancini to paint a portrait of Mr. Gardner. Mancini’s method of painting is to put a network of squares about two inches large in front of the canvas and to paint the picture through these squares. You sometimes see traces of these threads in Mancini’s work. J. thinks with Sargent that Mancini is a man of genius--he knows him well and I have been to his studio in Rome. Mr. Curtis’s last _mot_. In the dining room of the Grand Hotel some one asks the name of a lady extremely décolletée. “The Princess Chemisoff, _née_ Alloff!” Curtis snapped out. I am sending you for your birthday two bits of old lace; one is Mechlin, the other Palestrina. I bought them in Venice. Old lace is now almost priceless; there has been a tremendous run on it. Jesurum, the famous lace dealer in Venice, told me that most of the good old lace has gone to America. I got a deal of tutoring about lace from him and now understand something of it. It makes me faint to remember how carelessly I have worn some of your rare old pieces. You must get them together and let me bring them back to be repaired. I have a wonderful lace woman; she wears the most powerful glasses I ever saw. It’s an awful trade, lace making or mending, too often ending in blindness.