To George Sturgis
9 Avenue de l’Observatoire
Paris. April 25, 1922
I have just returned to Paris from Italy, and am looking over my arrears of letters in order to start the season with a clear conscience. I am afraid I haven’t yet answered your interesting letter of February 20th in which you gave me an account of the various investments of which I am the happy but semi-conscious possessor. It all sounds very safe, prosperous, and up-to-date, and if I ventured to make any comments, they would be hopelessly trivial and unbusiness-like, and hardly worthy of an old editor of the Harvard Lampoon, since I can think of nothing but double meanings for American vitrified products preferred, and the furnishing of light heat and power to such important parts of the world as Saint Louis, Mo. not to speak of medicine for England Scotland and Wales. I am only sorry that I am not supplying a little medicine to Ireland also. I vaguely remember trying to furnish a little light to little groups of obscure minds in some dark corner of Sever Hall: but it never entered my thoughts to supply all Boston with heat and power as well. This only shows how we do our best actions without knowing it, and how we may be laying up pleasant surprises for ourselves against the Day of Judgement.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.