“Fourteenth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues I have seen with three sets of buildings—­first shanties near Sixth Avenue from the rear of which it was rumoured a bogy would be likely to pursue and kidnap us....  These shanties were followed by fine, brownstone residences....  Some of these, however, I think came when there had ceased to be a village.  Later on came business into Fourteenth Street....”

And today those never-to-be-sufficiently-pitied folk who live in the Fifties and Sixties and Seventies think of Fourteenth Street as downtown!

CHAPTER VII

Restaurants, and the Magic Door

I

What scenes in fiction cling more persistently in the memory than those that deal with the satisfying of man’s appetite?  Who ever heard of a dyspeptic hero?  Are not your favourites beyond the Magic Door all good trenchermen?

     —­ARTHUR BARTLETT MAURICE.

It was O. Henry, I believe, who spoke of restaurants as “literary landmarks.”  They are really much more than that—­they are signposts, psychical rather than physical, which show the trend of the times—­or of the neighbourhood.  I suppose nothing in Greenwich Village could be more significantly illuminating than its eating places.  There are, of course, many sorts.  The Village is neither so unique nor so uniform as to have only one sort of popular board.  But in all the typical Greenwich restaurants you will find the same elusive something, the spirit of the picturesque, the untrammelled, the quaint and charming—­in short, the different!

The Village is not only a locality, you understand, it is a point of view.  It reaches out imperiously and fastens on what it will.  The Brevoort basement—­after ten o’clock at night—­is the Village.  So is the Lafayette on occasion.  During the day they are delightful French hostelries catering to all the world who like heavenly things to eat and the right atmosphere in which to eat them.  But as the magic hour strikes, presto!—­they suffer a sea change and become the quintessence of the Spirit of the Village!

It is 10.20 P.M. at the Brevoort in the restaurant upstairs.  All the world and his wife—­or his sweetheart—­are fully represented.  Most of the uptowners—­the regulation clientele—­are going away, having finished gorging themselves on delectable things; some few of them are lingering, lazily curious; a certain small number are still coming in, moved by that restless Manhattanic spirit that hates to go home in the dark.

Among these is a discontented, well-dressed couple, seen half an hour before completing their dinner a block away at the Lafayette.  The head waiter at that restaurant explained them nonchalantly, not to say casually: 

“It is the gentleman who married his manicurist.  Regard, then—­one perceives they are not happy—­eh?  It is understood that she beats him.”