To John Hall Wheelock
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. February 17, 1945
I am now writing this by an open French window in the sun, already springlike here at this season. So that although we are deprived of many old conveniences or luxuries, we are not more uncomfortable than everybody used to be always two hundred years ago. My experience of life in Avila has made the little privations of the war seem quite tolerable.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ.