South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1919-06-09
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studio. and shared what little light
you got vita the Gts and the black
beetles md the artists in the next
studio. who never would take In
th-- milk 1ottles in time to keep
the mlk from turning sour.
What It's Like.
Greenwich Village Is full of rick
ETY. old houses and stumbly old
steps. and smelly old drainage. and
I leaky cid gas Jets, SpOtty old bath
/ tubs-there are more smells 10 an
: inch in Greenwich Village than
there are anywhere in America out
! side of certain quarters in New Or
1 leans and a certain wind-swept hill
in San Francisco.
Greenwich Village is also the one
really interesting place to live in
I New York Ii is the one place where
you can live and be yourself. Its
the only place where you can know
your neighbors, and speak 10 the
/ pOstman and say good morning"
TO the grocery boy without losing
cast. 1t is the New Yorkiest place
in the world, and less like New
York than any other inhabited spot
on the face of the globe.
You can be as rich as Croesus
and live in Greenwich Village, or
you can be as poor as a church
mouse and exist there.
You can wear anything from
Russian sables TO a homemade
cloak 10 art material that looks like
a bed quilt. and be perfectly in the
mode anywhere within six blocks of
the Washington arch.
Greenwich Village always seems
TO me the only really sane place on
Manhattan island, and il is full OF
more cranks and more faddistS and
more pOseurs and more extremists
than you could find in 90 miles of
any other part of any other coun-
try in the world.
If you belong to what Fay King
calls The Smock Set" you live in
Greenwich Village as naturally as
mouse lives in a cheese-if there's
a cheese handy.
If you want to run away with
somebody else's husband and say
nothing about il, you may step over
to Boston for your honeymoon.
In the Village"
But if you want TO get out an ex-
ira about the affair, you go down
TO Greenwich Village, hire a studio
apartment and give a breakfast at
O'Clock in the morning TO which
you invite the policeman on the
beat, the ragpicker from the square.
all your first husbands relatives,
your own mothers divorced hus-
band. the man who deserted your
sister and her three helpless chill
dren, an Anglican clergyman, some
writer's Of free verse a painter or
two. your maiden aunt and the lead
er of the last most scandalous sur
prise dance from the fastest cabaret
in town-and YOU couldn't do il and
make a success of it anywhere on
this foot-stool except in Greenwich
Village.
If you're one of a clever young
couple and you want TO paint or
write, or act or make statues. or
weave tapestry-you gravitate 10
Greenwich Village as naturally as a
moth gravitates 10 a flame
And when you get there you can
live quite as simply and quite as
decently, and quite as sanely and
quite az normally as you can live
anywhere else on earth, and YOU
can have the fun Of running to the
window every night from seven till
midnight. 70 watch the Villagers go
ing forth TO gambOl on the green
and wonder who on earth started
the fashion for elderly ladies 10 bob
their hair and learn 10 do tenn
peramental dances
Free unions? Yes. they do -four
ish in Greenwich Village. but so
thank hevaen. do love and honor
and duty and simple faith and kind
~ human nature.
Come on, let's all 90 down 10 the
Village and be really natural-for a
few minutes