Then there is the Bohemian trail that leads along three sides of Washington Square.  In the red Benedick much literary ink has been spilled.  Until a few years ago there were several studios of artists along the south side of the Square.  One of the artists, highly talented but quite mad, boasted for a brief period the possession of a slave—­a huge Riff from the mountains of Morocco, acquired in some mysterious manner.  All Bohemia flocked to the studio to witness the anachronism.  For the benefit of those of New York who did not belong to Bohemia the artist delighted to promenade the streets followed at a respectful distance by his serf.  Absolam—­so the chattel was called—­bearing his chains lightly, considered his main duty to be to make love to the ladies of Bohemia.  The artist’s real troubles began when he undertook to rid himself of his slave.  Absolam, waxing greasily fatter and fatter, basking in the warmth of delightful celebrity, refused to be lost.

Long before the days of Absolam and his master there were painter men about the Square.  Morse, according to Helen W. Henderson’s “A Loiterer in New York,” was the first artist to work there.  He lived in the old New York University building, and when he was not before his easel, was experimenting with the telegraph.  In that building also Draper wrote, and perfected his invention of the daguerreotype, and Colt invented the revolver named after him.  The old grey castellated structure, erected in 1837, stood on the east side of the Square until 1894.

Of a restaurant that played a part in one of his stories O. Henry wrote:  “Formerly it was a resort of interesting Bohemians; but now only writers, painters, actors, and musicians go there.”  The same topsy-turvical irony might have been directed with equal happiness at the cafe of the Brevoort, or the Black Cat on West Broadway, or Gonfarone’s at the corner of Eighth and MacDougal Streets, or at old Maria’s.  Whatever else it may be Bohemia is a democracy, and regardless of condition or occupation any one who so wishes may lay claim to and enjoy the privileges of immediate citizenship.  We have become more tolerant with the years.  He who prates of Philistines is himself a Philistine.

Formerly it was different.  To escape the reproach of the uplifted eyebrow, the quizzical look, the “que diable allait il faire dans cette galere?” expression, it was necessary to be one of the Mr. Lutes or Miss Nedra Jennings Nuncheons, of Stephen French Whitman’s “Predestined,” who were regular habitues of “Benedetto’s,” under which name Gonfarone’s was thinly disguised.  Mr. Lute wrote a quatrain once every three months for the “Mauve Monthly,” and Miss Nuncheon, tall and thin, with a mop of orange-coloured hair, contributed somewhere stories about the “smart set,” “a society existing far off amid the glamour of opera-boxes, conservatories full of orchids, yachts like ocean steamships, mansions with marble stairways, Paris dresses by the gross, and