Social Equal

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Herewith arc excerpts from letters come to the desks of the editors during the past "week. They are selected primarily for the information they contain, either supplementary to, or corrective of, news previously published in TIME.

Library, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va. TIME Dec. 20, 1924. New York, N. Y. Gentlemen: In your issue of Dec. 1, you have a disparaging reference to Charles Bellini, the first professor of modern languages in the College of William and Mary. The writer of the item gives the impression that Bellini was one of the vine dressers who accompanied Mazzei, under Jefferson's encouragement, to Albemarle County, Virginia, in 1775; and that after his failure to develop a successful vineyard, Jefferson raised him from the rank of laborer in a vineyard to the position of professor of modern languages in the college of William and Mary. Carlo Bellini was a clerk in the treasurer's office in Florence and accompanied his friend Mazzei as a social equal to Virginia. Mazzei was an Italian physician, who had been a merchant for a few years in Smyrna, and later in London, before coming to Virginia. After Mazzei's return to Europe from Virginia, he held various important positions, among others, financial agent for Virginia in Europe, and privy councillor to the King of Poland. The two friends corresponded for years on intimate terms. In the Library of Congress there is preserved the correspondence between Jefferson and Bellini, covering a period of 20 years. It does not seem that Jefferson would write long letters to Bellini on the political situation in Europe, or ask his advice as to the best translations of the Latin and Greek Classics into Italian, as these letters show, unless Bellini were a gentleman of considerable attainments and learning. E. G. SWEM, Librarian.

That Dr. Bellini was a man of learning and attainments is obvious enough in that he was appointed Professor of Modern Languages at the College of William and Mary. That a man should at one time or another have tended grape vines is no cause for his friends to be ashamed. The popular Abel was a stockbreeder; Abraham Lincoln functioned as ploughman; King David tended sheep—as did Ramsay Mac-Donald; Cincinnatus was twice called from the plough to the Dictatorship of —and twice returned to it; Rousseau was a son of a humble Geneva watchmaker; the famed Dr. Johnson was a son of a poor bookseller; Christopher Columbus helped his father to comb wool; Thomas Alva Edison started life as a newsboy; John Keats, before he became a medical student, used to help his father tend the horses at the Swan and Hoop livery stables; Mohammed was a lowly caravan conductor.—ED.

Not a Cripple

The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America New York, N. Y. TIME, Dec. 15, 1924. New York, N. Y. GENTLEMEN: My daughter, who is a diligent student of TIME (as I am also) at her school, writes regarding your issue of Dec. 8 with mingled gratification and consternation.

Your description of her father as a cripple moves her to wonder if she is needed to come and care for him.

I share her appreciation for your kindly expressions, but I am fearful about your description of iny physical decrepitude in relation to my commission in the U. S. Army.