n More

result of intellectual theories evolved by those whose only pleasure in existence is to create laws for others to obey ... an art, let us say, that springs out of the emotional depths of crea

ay to the autho

don't live here. Live here a few years and

g little tale is quoted; it is an old ta

set about to write a book concerning it. Then the peop

bout in our land, attempt to describe it? We, who have liv

d shut the book in which he

ry, the land you have lived in so long and kn

ng that which they knew and loved, and had lived in and with since birth. And after they were t

said, after

, but what is the country lik

rlains, who was a plai

e book written by these people about their country, and

be truth? For what we are close to we must see

ittle object and held it close to the eyes o

king and scowling,

a vol

; it is an inkstand," and showin

before the eyes of another king

said, "I think it is a

chamberlain. "It is the sta

y made a law that no one should stand too close to the thing he wished to see clearly.

once more and started writing his book. I

countryside. Sometimes their fragments prove to be useless and without value, for there are travellers and travellers, and some will be as stupid and as blind as

aderie among the "Bohemians" of the world below Fourteenth Street which the more restricted uptowners find it hard to believe in. It is difficult for those uptowners to understand a condition of mind which makes it possible for a number of ambitious young people in a studio building to go fireless and supperless one day and

's good fortune; if one has had luck oneself, one expects, as a

tudio door. She opens it to confront the man who lives on the top floor and whom she has never

me use your gas stove to make some tea. Mine is out of commission. Just go ahe

eerfully unconscious of anythin

r, from the front door, one day, "I have to h

oats down a voi

l be getting some pay tomor

nd would merrily "chuck" him the same amount if s

to know better. The Village is, to be sure, entirely unconventional and incurably romantic and dramatic in its tastes. It is appallingly honest, dangerousl

onsequent, infectious

rd's name) appears in a new hat; a gorgeous, new

urprise the Poet from the Third Floor, who knows that t

explains the Lady of t

omic importance, but so human and so enchanting; so warm when it is bitter cold, so rich when

e a number of presents, she found the proprietor away. She was asked to pick out what she wanted, and make a list. She did. Nobody even questioned her accuracy. The next time she went she had a friend with her, w

Bohemia?" demanded the

done up, they wanted twine. Don't

ietor gently. "Of course I should have

ly to go and sit on the steps of one of those blessed studio buildings, to receive pity, help and cheer. And-ye gods!-isn't the fact well known! And isn

ted right and left; thank heaven,

tional standpoint is very difficult to analyse. It real

a shops is a group of girls and men smoking. To them ente

's had six drinks, and is now asleep upstairs on Ele

sympathetically, and t

efore. Neither is it an unheard-of occurrence for a friendly and charitably inclined woman to grant him harbour room till he has slept it off. The only striking point about this is that it is taken so entirely as a matter of course by the Villagers. It no more astonishes them that E

UGAL

oncerted by the occasional snore that wakes the midnight echoes. She works peacefully on at the black-and-white poster which she is going to submit tomorrow. She does not resent Dickey at all. Neither does she

ore will make him black coffee and send h

. Fancy, above all, the hungry gossip of conventional Julia's conventional friends! But in the V

of sex," "suppressed desires," "love without bonds," "liberty of the individual" do, when jumbled up sufficiently, make a composite picture of strange and lurid aspect. But actually, they

hrewd man, "I heard of more impropriety and

another

she is exquisitely dressed in a peach-coloured gown, open of neck and short of sleeve. She is slim and graceful and her bright-brown hair is cropped in the Village mode. She is the most attractive maid-of-all-work that the two "customers" have ever seen. When, pausing in her labours, she offers them her own cigarette case with the genuine simplicity and grace of a child offering sweetmeats, their subjugation is complete. Though they are strangers in a strange land-they have only

shop" or eating place instead of a regular address is most prevalent among Villagers. A Villager is seldom in his own quarters unless he has a shop of his own. But if he really "belongs"

drop in at the 'Klicket' during the evening. Or if he isn't there try 'The Mad Hatter's,'-'Down the Rabbit Hole' you know;-or let's see-he'll be sure t

r the Village is a small place, and a true Village in its

working smocks stroll across Sixth Avenue from one square to another with as little self-consciousness as though they were meandering down Main Street to a game of tennis or the village store! Sixth Avenue, indeed, has come to mean nothing more to them than a rustic bridge or a barbed-wire fence,-something to be gotten over speedily and forgotten. They even, by some alchemy of view point, seem to give it a rural air from Jeffe

uld take the railway in order to get into the city on necessary business. As a matter of fact there is no corner of New York more convenient

e crime at the corner of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue. There is prob

downtown but not up. Uptown nearly always means something distasteful and boring to t

ies, thirties, even the twenties, are to them the veritable wildern

elling his house at Eighth Street because it was so far out o

gically: "My dear, isn't it awful? We've had to move uptown! Since t

. "You've always been such regular Villagers. What shall we d

eet!" sobbed the sa

singular and touching passion for her only child. At the Greenwich masquerades she used to shine resplendent, her beautiful, lithe body glorious with stage-jewels, and not much else; for the time being she has flitted away, but some day she will surely return like a darkly brilliant butterfly, and the Village will again th

e conforming to its ideals.... Four barbers in attenda

as posed for almost every artist of note,

dy Shop; an impressive person who carries trays of candy about the

k.... However, in the Village you need not be too exact. There is "Ted" Peck's Treasure Box. Here all manne

ght languages and draws like a god; there are a hundred and one familiar spirits of the Village, eccentric, i

eaking in a more practical and also a more social sense. In this sense we may cite three distinct ways in which a community may become articulate: through its press; through its clubs or associations; thr

herever socialistic or anarchistic tendencies are to be found. But its inception was in Greenwich Village, and in its infant days it strongly reflected the radical, young, insurgent spirit which was just beginning

n The Masses was in Greenwich Avenue, and the editor, the business

Street, the traditional and permanent boundary line. There it may reach out an

sour grapes for all I know! Though this particular man seemed calm and dispassionate. "The Liberal Club Board," he said, "is a purely autocratic institution. It is collectively a trained poodle, though

an experienced and dyed-in-the-wool socialist who had lectured over half the globe. It is recorded of him that once when a certain young and energetic Village editor had been holding forth uninterruptedly and dramatic

med earnesly, "d

is the Lib

e; one that it is the only vehicle of free speech; Arthur Moss says it is "the most il-liberal club in the world"! Floyd Dell

and its bad, its fluctuations as to standards and favour, its share in the curio

through the lounge room-the conventional outpost of the club, with desks and tables and chairs and prints and so on-you find yourself in a corridor with long seats, and windows opening on to Nora Van Leuwen's big, bare, picturesque Dutch Oven downstairs. On the other side of the corridor is the dance room-also the lates

e-like, would not perjur

much m

he quit

int people green i

rbably off in a fox trot wit

utiful in its way. Life is rotten and beautiful both at once. So is the Village. The Village is big in idea and it's growing. They talk of its being a dead letter. It's just beg

reporters,' think that anything will go in the Liberal Club! They come here and insult the women members, and we all end up in a free fig

ere, and-Macdougal Alley, Washington Mews, and the new, rather stately structures on Eighth Street, which are almost too grand for real artists and yet whic

though it had suddenly sprung there, I beheld a little street running at right angles from me, parallel with Eighth, but ending, like a cul de sac, in houses like those with which i

panish dress and a man in Moorish costume. The warm reds and greens and russets of their

eeding his horses, saw my

STUDIO. Choo

gal's Alley,"

nothing t

oured by curiosity; "the stag

ughed

ey!" he repeated, as though

n I came to fi

t is, that haven't them still. Of course the picturesquely attired individuals I had caught sight of were models-taking the air, or snatching a moment for flirtation. Naturally they w

ou are nowhere near New York, with its prose and drudgery. If for a moment it seems all a bit too perfect for the haphazard, inspirational loveliness of the Village, you will surely

king a feature of recent times and have proved so useful and so fruitful to the tired Sunday-supplement newspaperman. There are various sorts, from the

rve as the story of one of these Village balls today. And Doris, who, I believe, appeared on one occasion as "Aphrodite,"-in appropriate "costume"-recalls the celeb

ous and expensive dressing,-or at least will pleasantly eke it out. Colour has long been recognised as a perfectly good substitute for cloth. Have you forgotten the small boy's abstract of the

if people don't get asked. If an invited guest chooses to bring a friend he may, but he is solely responsible for that friend and if his charge proves undesirable he will be held accountable and will thereafter be quie

then there was the "Rogue's Funeral" ball. This was to commemorate the demise of a certain little magazine called the Rogue, whose career

of funeral in capitals," says

he resiliency, the electric vitality of youth, could stand this sort of thing; but then, the Village is young; it is pre?minently the land of youth, and the wine o

the best Village-the Village which, like the Fairy Host, sings to the sojourners of the grey world to come and join them in their dance, with

John R

here's

in Bo

more of it- there

s a void of voices! A community must strongly utter something, and must find mouths and mouthpieces for the purpose. It was hard to find, hard to locate, hard

voice in the wilderness, if you like! There have been play-acting companies, "The Washingto

racles. But I believe if we could take the time to investigate, we would find that

ld live apart from its fellows, that is, in its integral parts. He contended (and enforced in Bayreuth) that all the arts were akin: that the brains which created music, drama, colour effects, plastic sculptural effects-anything and everything that belonged to artistic

re. They are finding-as anyone must have known they would find-a new mood expression, a new voice. And, wise, not in

at the Villagers themselves are working for, day and night: beauty, truth, liberty, novelty, drama. It is going, in its theatrical form, to fill the need for something concrete and yet various, something

t as many great plays of all kinds as we can find. But we want to op

t greater neighbourhood of the world, which is fervently concerned in the new and thrilling and wonderful and untrammell

lage Theatre is going to be one o

AST

-what of the Villag

ious sayings, "there have been a dozen 'villages.'

ssion, the play-acting mania; and other violent and more or less transient enthusiasms which had possessed the Village during the years he had lived there. Not wholly transient, he admitted. Something of each and all of them had remained-had stuck-as he expressed it. The Village assimilates ideas

ry, very gently and kindly, as you laugh at children; and rather reverently, too, in th

smatic waves, fresh, invigourating and energetic waves, carrying on their crests iridescent seaweed and glittering shells and now and

ic in the song of the city. Some of the glowing reds and greens and purples that you saw those grown-up children in the Village joyously splashing on their wooden toys or the walls of their absurd and charming "shops" will somehow get into the grey fabric of your life; and a certain eager urg

ar from it. But Greenwich Village gets into your heart, and you will

E