ington Square. Covering the entire period of the
city's history, passing through startling changes and transformations,
the scene of great happenings, the background of illustrious or
curious lives,--it is probably more typical of the vertiginous
development of New York than any single section. The Indians, the
Dutch, the English, the Colonials, the Revolutionists, the New
Americans, the shining lights of art, science, fashion and the state,
have all passed through it, confidently and at home. The dead have
slept there; wicked men have died there and great ones been honoured.
Belles and beaux have minced on their way beneath the thick green
branches,--branches that have also quivered to the sound of artillery
fire saluting a mighty nation newborn. Nothing that a city can feel or
suffer or delight in has escaped Washington Square. Everything of
valour and tragedy and gallantry and high hope--that go to making a
great town as much and more than its bricks and mortar--are in that
nine and three-quarters acres that make up the very heart and soul of
New York.

The lovely Arch first designed by Stanford White and erected by
William Rhinelander Stewart's public-spirited efforts, on April 30,
1889, was in honour of the centennial anniversary of Washington's
inauguration; it was so beautiful that, happily, it was later made
permanent in marble, and in all the town there could have been found
no more fitting place for it.

In every really great city there is one place which is, in a sense,
sacred from the profanation of too utilitarian progress. However
commercialised Paris might become, you could not cheapen the environs
of Notre Dame! Whatever happens to us, let us hope that we will always
keep Washington Square as it is today,--our little and dear bit of
fine, concrete history, the one perfect page of our old, immortal New
York!

Father Knickerbocker, may you dream well!

CHAPTER II

_The Green Village_

God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb down Greenwich
way!--THOMAS JANVIER.

Did you know that "Greenwich Village" is tautology? That region known
affectionately as "Our Village" is Greenwich, pure and simple, and
here is the "why" of that statement.

The word _wich_ is derived from the Saxon _wick_, and originally had
birth in the Latin _vicus_, which means village. Hence, Greenwich
means simply the Green Village, and was evidently a term describing
one of the first small country hamlets on Manh