“And thus” [Wetmore once again] “passed away the glories and the shadows of Richmond Hill.  All that remains of them are a few fleeting memories and a page or two of history fast fading into oblivion.”

For once, I cannot quite agree with him—­not when he says that.  For surely the home of so much romance and grandeur and charm and importance must leave something behind it other than a few fleeting memories and a page or two of history.  Houses have ghosts as well as people, and if ever there stood a house with a personality, that was sweet, poignant and indestructible, it was the House on Richmond Hill.

I, who tell you this, am very sure.  Have I not seen it sketched in bright, shadowy lines upon the air above Charlton and Varick streets,—­its white columns shining through all the modern city murk?  Go there in the right mood and at the right moment, and you will see, too.

CHAPTER V

"Tom Paine, Infidel."

...  These are the times that try men’s souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman....  I have as little superstition in me as any man living; but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent.—­“The Crisis.”

I want you to note carefully the title of this chapter.  And then I want you to note still more carefully the quotation with which it opens.  It was the man known far and wide as “the infidel,”—­the man who was denounced by church-goers, and persecuted for his unorthodox doctrines,—­who wrote with such high and happy confidence of a fair, a just and a merciful God Almighty.

Before me lies a letter from W.M. van der Weyde, the president of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association.  One paragraph meets my eyes at this moment: 

     “Paine was, without doubt, the very biggest figure that ever
     lived in ‘Greenwich Village.’  I think, on investigation, you
     will realise the truth of this statement.”

I have realised it.  And that is why I conceive no book on Greenwich complete without a chapter devoted to him who came to be known as “the great Commoner of Mankind.”  He spoke of himself as a “citizen of the world,” and there are many quarters of the globe that can claim a share in his memory, so we will claim it, too!