* * * * *

That men of the sobriety and standing of Cyrus the Gaunt, MacLachan,
Leon Coventry, the Little Red Doctor, and Boggs (I do not count young
Phil Stacey, for he was insane at the time, and has been so, with
modifications and glorifications, ever since) should paint their noses
green and frequent dubious cellars, calls for explanation. The
explanation is Barbran.

Barbran came to us from the immeasurable distances; to wit, Washington
Square.

Let me confess at once that we are a bit supercilious in our attitude
toward the sister Square far to our West, across the Alps of Broadway.
Our Square was an established center of the social respectabilities when
the foot of Fifth Avenue was still frequented by the occasional cow
whose wanderings are responsible for the street-plan of Greenwich
Village. Our Square remains true to the ancient and simple traditions,
whereas Washington Square has grown long hair, smeared its fingers with
paint and its lips with free verse, and gone into debt for its
inconsiderable laundry bills. Washington Square we suspect of playing at
life; Our Square has a sufficiently hard time living it. We have little
in common.

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that there are veritable humans, not
wholly submerged in the crowd of self-conscious mummers who crowd the
Occidental park-space, and it was at the house of one of these, a woman
architect with a golden dream of rebuilding Greenwich Village, street by
street, into something simple and beautiful and, in the larger sense