e is superfluous--and achieving pleasure
for others, and comfort and a livelihood for himself, at one and the
same time.

I know of nothing which is so typical or so significant in all the
Village as this new urge toward good craftsmanship, elementary poetic
design,--the fundamentals of a utilitarian, beautiful and pervading
art life apart from clay or canvas.

The capitol of the Village shifts a bit from time to time, as befits
so flexible, so fluid a community. Just at the present writing, it is
at Sheridan Square that you will find it most colourfully and
picturesquely represented. Tomorrow, no man may be able to say whence
it has flitted.

You will find much golden sunshine in Sheridan Square--not the
approved atmosphere of Bohemia, yet the real thing nevertheless. It is
a broad, clean, brazen sort of sunshine--a sunshine that should say,
"See me work! See me shine! See me show up the least last ugliness or
smallness or humbleness, and glorify it to something Village-like and
picturesque!"

When you leave the sunny square, you will enter the oddest little
court in all New York; it has not to my knowledge any name, but it is
the general address of enough tea shops and studios and Village haunts
to stock an entire neighbourhood. The buildings are old--old, and, of
course, of wood. These artist folk have metamorphosed the shabby and
dilapidated structures into charming places.

Following the sign of deep blue with yellow letters which indicates
that this is the place where the Hand-Painted Wooden Toys are made,
you must climb in the sunshine up the outside staircase, which looks
as though it had been put up for scaffolding purposes and then
forgotten. Pausing on the rickety stairway and looking out beyond the
crazy little court and over the drowsy Square, you will have a great
deal of difficulty in believing that you left your cable car about a
minute and a half before. Pass on up the stairs. You may nearly fall
over the black-and-white feline which belongs to no one in any of the
buildings, but which haunts them all like an unquiet ghost, and which
is known by everyone as the Crazy Cat; so to the door of the
studio-workshop where the toys are made.

[Illustration: PATCHIN PLACE. One of the strange little "lost courts"
given over to the Villagers and their pursuits.]

And have you ever seen anything quite like that workshop?

A little light studio full of colour and the smell of paint. On one
side blue-green