In Virginia

At Williamsburg, Va., the Virginia Lodge of the Sons of Italy last week donated $1,000 to the College of William and Mary. The College is building a new men's dormitory, Monroe Hall; and the Lodge indicated that its money was to endow a memorial room in this hall in honor of one Charles Bellini. And who, pray, was Charles Bellini?

Thomas Jefferson once experimented with a vineyard in Albemarle County. importing skilled husbandmen from Italy. With the workmen came. Charles Bellini, citizen of Florence. Try as they would, however, Bellini and his men could grow no grapes for Jefferson. The vines sickened, withered, were abandoned. Whereupon Jefferson, in a gesture at once courteous and resourceful, had Bellini installed as a professor at William and Mary, then a sprightly institution only 86 years old. There Bellini stayed from 1779 to 1803, teaching Italian and Spanish, "first professor of modern languages in the U. S."