Louise, the fashion illustrator, from the front door,
one day, "I have to have two dollars to pay my gas bill. Got any?"

"One-sixty," floats down a voice from upstairs.

"Chuck it down, please. I'll be getting some pay tomorrow, and we can
blow it in."

So Jimmy chucks it down. Louise is a nice girl, and would merrily
"chuck" him the same amount if she happened to have it. That's all
there is to it.

There is a great deal of nonsense talked about the wickedness or at
least the impropriety of Greenwich Village--and some of the talk is by
people who ought to know better. The Village is, to be sure, entirely
unconventional and incurably romantic and dramatic in its tastes. It
is appallingly honest, dangerously young in spirit and it is rather
too intense sometimes, keyed up unduly with ambition and emotion and
the eagerness of living. But wicked? Not a bit of it!

And the heavenly, inconsequent, infectious, absurd gaiety of it!

The Lady Who Owns the Parrot (Pollypet is the bird's name) appears in
a new hat; a gorgeous, new hat, with a band of scarlet and green
feathers.

"Whence the more than Oriental splendour?" demands in surprise the
Poet from the Third Floor, who knows that the Lady is not patronising
Fifth Avenue shops at present.

"Pollypet is moulting!" explains the Lady of the Parrot, with a laugh.

Dear, merry, kindly, pitiful life of the studios!--irresponsible,
perhaps, and not of vast economic importance, but so human and so
enchanting; so warm when it is bitter cold, so rich when the larder is
empty, so gay when disappointment and failure are sitting wolf-like at
the door.

A rich woman who loves the Village and often-times goes down there to
buy her gifts rather than get them from the more conservative places
uptown, told me that once when she went to a Village gift-shop to
purchase 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, who was, I imagine, more or less thrilled by the notion of
approaching the bad, bold city,--she was from out of town. The
shopkeeper was out in the back garden dressed in blue overalls and
shirt, hoeing vigorously.

"Is this the heart of Bohemia?" demanded the astonished provincial.

After their purchases were made and done up, they wanted twine. Don't
forget, please, that this was a shop.

"Twine?" murmur