and requires quite a bit of skill. It is well known to all
frequenters; the only odd thing is that it is not better known.

"Americans are funny!" laughs Raymond Orteig. "When I go abroad and
see something which is new and different from what has been before, my
instinct is to get hold of it and bring it back. If I can I bring it
back in actual bulk; if I were a writer I would bring it back in
another way. But through these years, while everyone has played our
absurd little game, no one has ever suggested writing about it--until
tonight!"

Its name? It is _Culbuto_. That is French,--practically applied,--for
failure! It is, you see, an effort to keep the little balls from
falling into the wrong holes. As it so often results in failure
_Culbuto_ is an ideal game to play for drinks! Someone has to pay all
the time! It is an unequal contest between the individual and the law
of gravity!

But we must not linger too long at the Lafayette, alluring though it
may be. All Greenwich is beckoning to us, a few blocks away. We have
a new world to explore--the world below Fourteenth Street.

Fourteenth Street is the boundary line which marks the Greenwich
Village's utmost city limits, as it marked those of our
great-grandfathers. Like a wall it stands across the town separating
the new from the old uncompromisingly. Miss Euphemia Olcott, who has
been quoted here before, describes the evolution of Fourteenth Street
in the following interesting way:

"Fourteenth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues I have
seen with three sets of buildings--first shanties near Sixth
Avenue from the rear of which it was rumoured a bogy would
be likely to pursue and kidnap us.... These shanties were
followed by fine, brownstone residences.... Some of these,
however, I think came when there had ceased to be a
_village_. Later on came business into Fourteenth
Street...."

And today those never-to-be-sufficiently-pitied folk who live in the
Fifties and Sixties and Seventies think of Fourteenth Street as
downtown!

CHAPTER VII

_Restaurants, and the Magic Door_

I

What scenes in fiction cling more persistently in the memory
than those that deal with the satisfying of man's appetite?
Who ever heard of a dyspeptic hero? Are not your favourites
beyond the Magic Door all good trenchermen?

--ARTHUR BARTLETT MAURICE.

It was O. Henry, I believe, who spoke of restauran