To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Venice. June 18, 1931
I expect to leave on the 22nd for Cortina d’Ampezzo, Hotel Miramonte, because although the heat here isn’t sensuously unpleasant, it keeps me from walking or writing. I have done nothing but read novels, one of which I am sending you—very cynical, but perhaps a hint of what you may find in England now-a-days, if you go there. I have also read Babbit, not the professor but the old novel by Sinclair Lewis. I like it: on another plane, it is very much in the spirit of The Last Puritan: but of course I make no attempt to rival the speech of his characters. As diagnosis, it seems fair.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910-1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY