I like to believe that ugly things are
slipping farther and farther from Our Village, that honest romance and
clean gaiety are rather the rule there than the exception, and that,
perhaps, the day will sometime dawn when there will be no more need of
the shame of prisons in Greenwich Village.
The early social growth of the city naturally centred about its
churches. Even in Colonial days conservative English society in New
York assembled on Sunday with a devotion directed not less to fashion
than to religion. We must not forget that America was really not
America then, but Colonial England. A graceful militarism was the
order of the day, and in the fashionable congregations were redcoats
in plenty. The Church of England, as represented and upheld by Trinity
Parish, was the church where everyone went. If one were stubborn in
dissenting--which meant, briefly, if one were Dutch--one attended such
of those sturdy outposts of Presbyterianism as one could find outside
the social pale. But one was looked down upon accordingly.
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