In every really great city there is one place which is, in a sense,
sacred from the profanation of too utilitarian progress. However
commercialised Paris might become, you could not cheapen the environs
of Notre Dame! Whatever happens to us, let us hope that we will always
keep Washington Square as it is today,--our little and dear bit of
fine, concrete history, the one perfect page of our old, immortal New
York!
Father Knickerbocker, may you dream well!
CHAPTER II
_The Green Village_
God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb down Greenwich
way!--THOMAS JANVIER.
Did you know that "Greenwich Village" is tautology? That region known
affectionately as "Our Village" is Greenwich, pure and simple, and
here is the "why" of that statement.
The word _wich_ is derived from the Saxon _wick_, and originally had
birth in the Latin _vicus_, which means village. Hence, Greenwich
means simply the Green Village, and was evidently a term describing
one of the first small country hamlets on Manhattan. Captain Sir.
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