To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. Feb. 18th, 1935
One effect of old age is that days and weeks seem to pass more quickly: there is hardly time to do anything, and evening and Sunday come round when you thought it was Wednesday or the early afternoon. I suppose the tempo of one’s own blood-vessels, or whatever keeps time within us, has grown slower, and we glide over events as if they were nothing capable of leaving a mark because our brains are too soft to retain new impressions. It’s not at all an unpleasant condition, though a bit ignominious, like all decay. A Mr. Keene, 79 years old, came to see me yesterday and told stories by rote. He said he enjoyed his visit, and I believe him. But he knows that I won’t return it.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Five, 1933-1936. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA