“Spice cakes. 
    Chocolate cake. 
    Strawberry tarts with whipped cream.”

And still as you peep through the door at the back you see more and still more goodies coming hot and fresh and enticing from the oven.  White cakes, golden cakes, delicately browned pies,—­if you are dieting by any chance you flee temptation and leave the “Mouse Trap” behind you.

It would be impossible to give even an approximately complete inventory of the representative places of the Village.  I have had to content myself with some dozen or so examples,—­recorded almost haphazard, for the most part, but as I believe, more or less typical, take them all in all, of the Village eating place in its varied and rather curious manifestations.

Then there is a charming shop presided over by a pretty girl with the inevitable smock and braided hair, where tea is served in order to entice you to buy carved and painted trifles.

And then there is, or was, the place kept by Polly’s brother, which was heartlessly raided by the police, and much maligned, not to say libelled, by the newspapers.

And then there was and is the “Hell Hole.”  Its ancient distinction used to be that it was one of the first cheap Bohemian places where women could smoke, and that it was always open.  When all the other resorts closed for the night you repaired to the “Hell Hole.”  As to the smoking, it has taken a good while for New York to allow its Bohemian women this privilege, though society leaders have enjoyed it for ages.  We all know that though most fashionable hotels permitted their feminine guests to smoke, the Haymarket of dubious memory always tabooed the custom to the bitter end!

The “Hell Hole” has always stoutly approved of cigarettes, so all honour to it!  And many a happy small-hours party has brought up there to top off the night in peace without having to keep an eye on the clock.

There is a little story told about one of these restaurants of which I have been writing—­never mind which.  A visiting Englishman on his way from his boat to his hotel dropped in at a certain place for a drink.  He found the company congenial and drifted into a little game which further interested him.  It was a perfectly straight game, and he was a perfectly good sport.  He stayed there two weeks.  No:  I shall not state what the place was.  But I think the story is true.

Personally, I don’t blame the Englishman.  Even shorn of the charm of a game of chance, there is many a place in Greenwich Village which might easily capture a susceptible temperament—­not merely for weeks, but for years!

The last of the tea shops is the “Wigwam,” in which, take note, it is the Indian game that is played.  Its avowed aim is “Tea and Dancing,” and it is exceedingly proud of its floor.  It lives in the second story of what, for over fifty years, has been the old Sheridan Square Tavern, and its proprietors are the Mosses,—­poet, editor and incidental “pirate” on one side of the house; and designer of enchanting “art clothes” on the other.  Lew Kirby Parrish, no less, has made the decorations, and he told me that the walls were grey with Indian decorations, and the ceiling a “live colour.”  I discovered that that meant a vivid, happy orange.