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As you've doubtless forgotten the circumstances in the press of more recent depredations, permit me to recapitulate them briefly.

Sometime on Saturday evening, August 22nd, while my family and I were dining at the Hostaria dell' Orso, in Rome, you jimmied a window of our home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and let yourselves into the premises.

Hastening to the attic, the temperature of which was easily hotter than the Gold Coast, you proceeded to mask the windows with a fancy wool coverlet, some khaki pants, and the like, and to ransack the innumerable boxes and barrels stored there.

What you were looking for ( unless you make a hobby of collecting old tennis rackets and fly screens ) eludes me, but to judge from phonograph records scattered about a fumed-oak Victrola.

You danced two tangos and a paso doble, which must have been fairly enervating in that milieu.

You then descended one story, glommed a television set from the music room -- the only constructive feature of your visit, by the way -- and, returning to the ground floor, entered the master bedroom.

From the curio cabinet on its south wall and the bureaus beneath, you abstracted seventeen ivory, metal, wood, and stone sculptures of Oriental and African origin, two snuffboxes, and a jade-handled magnifying glass.

Rummaging through a stack of drawers nearby, you unearthed an antique French chess set in ivory and sandalwood, which, along with two box Kodaks, you added to your haul.

Then, having wrapped the lot in an afghan my dog customarily slept on, you lammed out the front door, considerately leaving it open for neighbors to discover.