e is that the most unlikely things that you can find out about
it are true. The obvious, every-day things that are easily believed
are much the most likely to be untenable reports or the day dreams of
imaginative chroniclers. You are safe if you believe all the quaint
and romantic and inconsistent and impossible things that come to your
knowledge concerning the Village. That is its special and sacred
privilege: to be unexpected and always--yes, always without
exception--in the spirit of its irrational and sympathetic role. It
needs Kipling's ambiguous "And when the thing that couldn't has
occurred" for a motto. And yet--and yet--like all true nonsense, this
nonsense is rooted in a beautiful and disconcerting compromise of
truth.

Cities do grow through their romances and their adventures. The
commonplaces of life never opened up new worlds nor established them
after; the prose of life never served as a song of progress. Never a
great onward movement but was called impossible. The things that the
sane-and-safe gentleman accepts as good sense are not the things that
make for growth, anywhere. And the principle, applied to lesser
things, holds good. Who wants to study a city's life through the
registries of its civic diseases or cures? We want its romances, its
exceptions, its absurdities, its adventures. We not only want them, we
must have them. Despite all the wiseacres on earth we care more for
the duel that Burr and Hamilton fought than for all their individual
achievements, good or bad. It is the theatrical change from the
Potter's Field to the centre of fashion that first catches our fancy
in the tale of Washington Square. In fact, my friend, we are, first
and last, children addicted to the mad yet harmless passion of
story-telling and story-hearing. I do hope that, when you read these
pages, you will remember that, and be not too stern in criticism of
sundry vastly important historic points which are all forgot and left
out of the scheme--asking your pardon!

The Village, old or new, is the home of romance (as we have said, it
is to be feared at least once or twice too often ere this) and it is
for us to follow those sweet and crazy trails where they may chance to
lead.

Since, then, we are concerned chiefly with the spirit of adventure, we
can hardly fail to note that this particular element has haunted the
neighbourhood of Washington Square fairly consistently.

If you will look at the Ratzer map you will see