One of my families of Messinesi, who have lost seventeen near relations, have asked me to try and find some black clothes for them. Poor lambs, we have all been so busy trying to keep them fed and alive that we have overlooked too much their natural feelings of grief and their desire to show respect to those they have lost by wearing mourning. I am buying up enormous quantities of handkerchiefs for my people--they all weep so terribly. It is a detail the larger committees leave out perforce. * * * * * Rome, February 23, 1909. To-day “Diana of the Tides” will be taken off the stretcher and packed. Till the last both Romans and tourists have swarmed to the studio. To-day came dear Mme. Helbig and the Professor. He called me his Aspasia and remembered my having posed for his tableau all those years ago. Mme. Barrère, the French Ambassadress, came to-day for the second time, bringing her daughter, who was a great friend of Mme. Blanc and knew all about you. It was one of the pleasant things to have the tables turned and to have the Romans who did not happen to have met or heard of you, admire your portrait as the mother-in-law and sometimes as the mother of the painter. You must not mind; the Romans had never heard of Paderewski when he came here quite lately to play. During his first concert they treated him rather cavalierly; that put him on his mettle, and before the end of the programme he had won out, but his audience with few exceptions had never heard about him, and were quite unaware that he was held to be the first living pianist! Now comes the break-up of our second Roman home and our return to you. We shall have “wot larks” together. I shall not leave you again as long as you and I live, except at your request. * * * * * Boston, January 2, 1910. Went to our old friend Bowdoin’s (formerly my father’s steward) funeral and sent a wreath with this legend: “From the children of Dr. Samuel G. Howe, in loving memory of their friend, Anthony Bowdoin.” The service was all as one would have wished, very properly done. I felt it deeply! The last of the old faithful hunting hounds of our great Huntsman gone! I think so much of that quality of leadership he had; when he wound his horn how these good hounds leaped to the chase,--Anagnos, Paddock, Bradford, Bowdoin, how many others, hardly a puling one in the pack.