Polly Holliday used to have her restaurant under the Liberal Club—­where the Dutch Oven is now,—­but now she has her own good-sized place on Fourth Street, and it remains, through fluctuations and fads, the most thoroughly and consistently popular Village eating place extant.  It is, outwardly, not original nor superlatively striking in any way.  It is a clean, bare place with paper napkins and such waits between courses as are unquestionably conducive to the encouragement of philosophic, idealistic, anarchistic and aesthetic debates.  But the food is excellent, when you get it, and the atmosphere both friendly and—­let us admit frankly—­inspiring.  The people are interesting; they discuss interesting things.  You are comfortable, and you are exhilarated.  You see, quickly enough, why the Village could not possibly get along without its inn; why “Polly’s” is so essential a part of its life that half the time it overlooks it.  Outsiders always know about “Polly’s.”  But the Villager?

“‘Polly’s’?  But of course ‘Polly’s.’”

There it is. Of course “Polly’s.”  “Polly’s” is Greenwich Village in little; it is, in a fashion, cosmic and symbolic.

Under the Liberal Club, where “Polly’s” used to be located, the “Dutch Oven,” with its capacious fireplace and wholesome meals, now holds sway.  The prices are reasonable, the food substantial and the atmosphere comfortable, so it is a real haven of good cheer to improvident Villagers.

The Village Kitchen on Greenwich Avenue is another place of the same sort.  And Gallup’s—­almost the first of these “breakfast and lunch” shops—­is another.  They are not unlike a Childs restaurant, but with the rarefied Village air added.  You eat real food in clean surroundings, as you do in Childs’, but you do it to an accompaniment that is better than music—­a sort of life-song, rather stirring and quite touching in its way—­the Song of the Village.  How can people be both reckless and deeply earnest?  But the Villagers are both.

One of the oddest sights on earth is a typical “Breakfast” at “Polly’s,” the “Kitchen” or the “Dutch Oven,” after one of the masked balls for which the Village has recently acquired such a passion.  After you have been up all night in some of these mad masquerades—­of which more anon—­you may not, by Village convention, go home to bed.  You must go to breakfast with the rest of the Villagers.  And you must be prepared to face the cold, grey dawn of “the morning after” while still in your war paint and draggled finery.  It is an awful ordeal.  But “it’s being done in the Village”!

Quite recently a new sort of eating place has sprung up in Greenwich Village—­of so original and novel a character that we must investigate it in at least a few of its manifestations.  Speaking for myself, I had never believed that such places could exist within sound of the “L” and a stone’s throw from drug stores and offices.

But see what you think of them.