To Conrad Hensler Slade
75 Monmouth Street
Brookline, Massachusetts. March 4, 1908
About September first it is not impossible that I may go to Heidelberg—it is the only place in Germany that tempts me back—to an international philosophic congress that is to meet there. I should see in the flesh a lot of ugly old men whose names I have seen in print all my life; and then I might go to Hamburg to make my friends there a few days’ visit before sailing for my Peru—that is what Cambridge is getting to be to my mercenary mind.
When you get this send me a card with your surest address—I am never sure what it is—and I will forward you the first volume of the Arabian Nights, which I have read twice, once at sea and once on cold winter nights, and which has made both wildernesses turn for the moment into enchanted oases. And it is so funny! Only at times my Hellenic political conscience rebels against this irresponsible, unintellectual way of feeling life—all changes and surfaces and prodigies.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book One, [1868]-1909. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.