and tinsel designed for the mystification of yokels and social
investigators from Long Island City. But it is impossible to deny that
the crazy decorations have added a touch of real colour to what had been
a drab corner of the town. The present writer has no intention of going
into a detailed sketch of this fragment of Bohemia for the reason that
Anna Alice Chapin discussed it so well, so buoyantly, and so
sympathetically in her book on "Greenwich Village" published a year or
so ago. A few lines from her description of the Pirate's Den will give
the flavour of any one of the enterprises that line the Lane of the Mad
Eccentrics and are to be found, here and there, in the neighbouring
streets.

"It is a very real pirate's den, lighted only by candles. A coffin casts
a shadow, and there is a regulation 'Jolly Roger,' a black flag
ornamented with skull and crossbones. Grim? Surely, but even a
healthy-minded child will play at gruesome and ghoulish games once in a
while.

"There is a Dead Man's Chest, too--and if you open it you will find a
ladder leading down into the mysterious depths unknown. If you are very
adventurous you will climb down and bump your head against the cellar
ceiling and inspect what is going to be a subterranean grotto as soon as
it can be fitted up. You climb down again and sit in the dim, smoky
little room and look about you. It is the most perfect pirate's den you
can imagine. On the walls hang huge casks and kegs and wine bottles in
their straw covers--all the sign manuals of past and future orgies. Yet
the 'Pirate's Den' is 'dry'--straw-dry, brick-dry--as dry as the Sahara.
If you want a 'drink' the well-mannered 'cut-throat' who serves you will
give you a mighty mug of ginger-ale or sarsaparilla. If you are a real
Villager and can still play at being a real pirate you drink it without
a smile, and solemnly consider it real red wine filched at the end of a
cutlass from captured merchantmen on the high seas. On the big, dark
centre table is carefully drawn the map of 'Treasure Island.'

"The pirate who serves you (incidentally he writes poetry and helps to
edit a magazine among other things) apologizes for the lack of a
Stevenson parrot. 'A chap we know is going to bring back one from the
South Sea Islands,' he declares seriously. 'And we are going to teach it
to say: "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!"'"

Then there is the Bohemian trail that leads along three sides of
Washington Square. In th