e alchemy of view point,
seem to give it a rural air from Jefferson Market down to Fourth
Street--these cool-looking, hatless young people who make their
leisurely way down Washington Place or along Fourth Street. People
pass them,--people in hats, coats and carrying bundles; but the
Villagers do not notice them. They do not even look at them pityingly;
they do not look at them at all. Your true Green-Village denizen does
not like to look at unattractive objects if he can possibly avoid it.

Of course, they do make use of Sixth Avenue occasionally, on their
rare trips uptown. But it is in the same spirit that a country dweller
would 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
conveniently situated for transportation than this particular section
of Greenwich. I came across a picturesque real estate advertisement
the other day:

"If you ever decide to kill your barber and fly the country,
commit the crime at the corner of Eighth Street and Sixth
Avenue. There is probably no other place in the world that
offers as many avenues of flight."

But nothing short of dire necessity ever takes a Villager uptown. He,
or she, may go downtown but not up. Uptown nearly always means
something distasteful and boring to the Village; they see to it that
they have as few occasions for going there as possible.

Anyway, uptown, for them, ends very far downtown! The fifties,
forties, thirties, even the twenties, are to them the veritable
wilderness, the variously repugnant sections of relatively outer
darkness.

Do you remember Colonel Turnbull who had so much trouble in selling
his house at Eighth Street because it was so far out of town? Here is
a modern and quite surprisingly neat analogy:

Two Village women of my acquaintance met the other day. Said one
tragically: "My dear, isn't it awful? We've had to move uptown! Since
the baby came, we need a larger house, but it almost breaks my heart!"

"I should think so!" gasped the second woman in consternation. "You've
always been such regular Villagers. What shall we do without you? It's
terrible! Where are you moving to, dear?"

"--West Eleventh Street!" sobbed the sad, prospective exile.

There are Villagers who while scarcely celebrities are characters so
well known, locally, as to stand out in bizarre relief even against
that variegated background of personalities. There is Doris