“Each one of these houses in the Village is from seventy-five to one hundred years old,” writes Mr. Pepe (he might have said a hundred and fifty with equal accuracy in a few cases), “and each one of them has a history of its own, individually, as being one of the houses occupied by someone who has made American history and some of these houses have produced some of our present great men.

“New York has nothing of the old, with the exception of those old Colonial houses and for this reason we are trying to preserve them....  This is the great advantage and distinction of Washington Square and Greenwich Village and this is what has made it popular and it will be greater as the years go by.  It will improve more and more with age, like an old wine.

     “There is only one old section of New York and that is
     Greenwich Village and Washington Square, and the public are
     also going to preserve this little part of old New York.”

Then there is that curious quality about Greenwich so endearing to those who know it, the quality of a haven, a refuge, a place of protected freedom.

“It’s a good thing,” said a certain brilliant young writer-man to me, “that there’s one place where you can be yourself, live as you will and work out your scheme of life without a lot of criticism and convention to keep tripping you up.  The point of view of the average mortal—­out in the city—­is that if you don’t do exactly as everyone else does there’s something the matter with you, morally or mentally.  In the Village they leave you in peace, and take it for granted that you’re decent until you’ve blatantly proven yourself the opposite.  I’d have lost my nerve or my wits or my balance or something if I hadn’t had the Village to come and breathe in!”

Not so different from the reputation of Old Greenwich, is it?—­a place where the rich would be healed, the weary rest and the sorrowful gain comfort.  Not so different from the lure that drew Sir.  Peter out to the Green Village between his spectacular and hazardous voyages; that gave Thomas Paine his “seven serene months” before death came to him; that filled the grassy lanes with a mushroom business-life which had fled before the scourge of yellow fever; not so different from the refreshing ease of heart that came to Abigail Adams and Theodosia Alston when they came there from less comforting atmospheres.  Greenwich, you see, maintains its old and honourable repute—­that of being a resort and shelter and refuge for those upon whom the world outside would have pressed too heavily.

There is no one who has caught the inconsequent, yet perfectly sincere spirit of the Village better than John Reed.  In reckless, scholarly rhyme he has imprisoned something of the reckless idealism of the Artists’ Quarter—­that haven for unconventional souls.