Sometimes their fragments
prove to be useless and without value, for there are travellers and
travellers, and some will be as stupid and as blind as the rest are
clever. If this book turns out to be written by one of the stupid
travellers--try to be generous, you Villagers--but then the Village is
always generous!
The studio life of Greenwich is really and truly as primitive, as
picturesque, as poverty-stricken and as gaily adventurous as the
story-tellers say. People really do live in big, quaint, bare rooms
with scarcely enough to buy the necessaries of life; and they are
undoubtedly gay in the doing of it. There is a sort of _camaraderie_
among the "Bohemians" of the world below Fourteenth Street which the
more restricted uptowners find it hard to believe in. It is difficult
for those uptowners to understand a condition of mind which makes it
possible for a number of ambitious young people in a studio building
to go fireless and supperless one day and feast gloriously the next;
to share their rare windfalls without thought of obligation on any
side; to burn candles instead of kerosene in order to dine at
"Polly's"; to borrow each other's last pennies for books or pictures
or drawing materials, knowing that they will all go without butter or
milk for tomorrow's breakfast.
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