Greenwich Village

								

so kind that my "thank you" must take in all of Greenwich.
It is said that hospitality, neighbourliness and genuine cordiality
are traits of any well-conducted village. Then be sure that our
Village in the city is not behind its rustic fellows. For, wherever
you stray or wherever you stop within its confines, you will always
find the latch-string hung outside.

    "Does a bird need to theorise about building its nest, or

    boast of it when built? All good work is essentially done

    that way--without hesitation, without difficulty, without

    boasting.... And now, returning to the broader question, what

    these arts and labours of life have to teach us of its

    mystery, this is the first of their lessons--that the more

    beautiful the art, the more it is essentially the work of

    people who ... are striving for the fulfilment of a law, and

    the grasp of a loveliness, which they have not yet

    attained.... Whenever the arts and labours of life are

    fulfilled in this spirit of striving against misrule, and

    doing whatever we have to do, honourably and perfectly, they

    invariably bring happiness, as much as seems possible to the

    nature of man."



    --JOHN RUSKIN.

CHAPTER I
The Chequered History of a City Square



     ... I know not whether it is owing to the tenderness of

     early association, but this portion of New York appears to

     many persons the most delectable. It has a kind of

     established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in

     other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper,

     richer, more honourable look than any of the upper

     ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare--the

     look of having had something of a social history.--HENRY

     JAMES (in "Washington Square").

There is little in our busy, modern, progressive city to suggest
Father Knickerbocker, with his three-cornered hat and knee-breeches,
and his old-world air so homely and so picturesque. Our great streets,
hemmed by stone and marble and glittering plate glass, crowded with
kaleidoscopic cosmopolitan traffic, ceaselessly resonant with
twentieth century activity, do not seem a happy setting for our
old-fashioned and beloved presiding shade. Where could he fall
a-nodding, to dream himself back into the quaint and gallant days of
the past? Where would he smoke his ancient Dutch pipe in peace? One
has a mental picture of Father Knickerbocker shaking his queued head
over so much noise and haste, so many new-fangled, cluttering things
and ways, such a confusion of aims and pursuits on his fine old
island! And he would be a wretched ghost indeed if doomed to haunt
only upper New York. But it happens that he has a sanctuary, a haven
after his own heart, where he can still draw a breath of relief, among
buildings small but full of age and dignity and with the look of homes
about them; on restful, crooked little streets where there remain