The Trinity term has begun and I am back from the vacation to Italy. These things I've seen:

New born roses growing in the crevices of a Doric temple two thousand year old . . . . In Florence: A young Monk, holding gown above his knees, running to catch a crowded trolley car . . . A well-dressed woman from New York, puffing a cigarette in a corner of her mouth, pin a red rose on a shabby beggar who was blind . . . . A thousand black birds break their journey through the sky and stop at a marble ruin lit with moonlight . . . . Mussolini, the Pope and George Santayana in one day . . . .

In Taormaina: A jug of wine, a book, a slender Italian youth under a cypress tree eating spaghetti . . . . This notice in a postoffice: "Young, smart, pretty Italian man who speaks a good English, would like to follow a nice woman around Italy" . . . . A sleepy donkey pulling a colorful cart laden with flowers along a road high above the sea looking towards the Bay of Naples just at sunrise . . . . A white goat kick a streamlined diesel engine which had just run over its baby . . . . In Rome one Sunday afternoon: A woman, ermine fur, Pekinese in arms, walking with a gentleman with top hat, cane; woman hesitates, looks round, gives dog to man and screws up big awning of grocery store.

A green caterpillar on a giraffe's neck . . . . A black cat looking pensively at a magnificent peacock just dead . . . . The Coliseum by full moonlight, three white cats in the arena playing . . . . 3 donkeys, 2 bottles, 5 Fascist soldiers outside a hotel in Naples serenading five American girls peeping from behind lace curtains . . . . A peasant woman in a field holding a child on her shoulders so that he could see over the wheat to the setting sun . . . . In the Cathedral at Agrigenti: a letter written by the devill