mense satisfaction of the audience, are revealed as essentially absurd. The trick is a genial vulgarity— a hilarious cheapening of life. When he speaks, with irresistible drollery, of women, of work, of marriage, of anything in the world, it is clear that they are not worth-his eloquent gesture says what, and the stout matron in the middle of the parquet becomes hysterical with laughter. For the moment she is not a solid block in the fabric of our sober American civilization, she is in a dream-world where all burdens are lifted, all values transvalued. It seems to afford her relief. . . . Then two dimpled soubrettes sing another sentimental song. In and out between these episodes floats the chorus, shaking its immortal legs. The legs and their owners classify themselves into three ranks or hierarchies of fleshly charm; in front the "little ones," the "ponies," in the next row the "mediums," and last and most sumptuous the "big ones," the "show girls." The "big ones" are the pièce de résistance. No frills, no sauces, but a satisfying superabundance. All that the hungry eye desires is bodied forth in these vast and shapely statues of feminine flesh, tipping the scale at not less than two hundred pounds. Two hundred pounds of arm and leg, bust and buttock; here is riches, here is Golconda: two hundred pounds of female meat! A thousand hungry eyes feast rapturously on the sight. But this is not the ultimate magic of burlesque.

A

A storm of applause, and a young woman enters on one toe, kicking the zenith with the other. young woman? A pinwheel, a skyrocket, a slender feminine firework! Feminine? Not with the obvious allurements of her sex. Her figure is like that of a boy; boyish is the mischievous face that sparkles behind the tangle of her short curls. She is like a sword-blade in a poppy-field. Her soul is adventurous, like her legs; she kicks open the zenith with her boisterous boyish laugh. She defies the code of the dream-world in which women burn with the ready fires of miscellaneous invitation; she is remote, unseizable, bewitchingly unsexed, cold as the fire-balls that dance in the Arctic rigging. She mocks at desire as she mocks at the law of gravitation; she is beyond sex. Nor is she mere muscle and grace. She has, shining in contrast to this impersonal world of sex, a hint of personality, a will of her own, an existence independent of the wishes of the audience. She smiles, scornfully, indifferently, mischievously-and triumphs. This touch of reality heightens the illusion. The dream goes on.

The music pounds itself with endless repetition through the senses into the soul. The rhythm of legs becomes the rhythm of the universe. The audience are absolutely at one with each other and with the genius of the slapstick, who talks to them familiarly now, as his friends. Cries and handclaps of applause mingle with the rhythm. The heart of

the little theatre beats gigantically, joyously, ecstatically. The play rises to its climax. To the tune of "Yankee Doodle" the young firework appears, turning handsprings, an American flag on the seat of her pants. Walking on her ear, she crosses the stage, waving the flag in the faces of the audience. The audience applauds in patriotic frenzy. They would die for that flag.

The curtain falls, rises a foot from the floor, and discloses a row of legs-legs-legs, twinkling across behind the footlights. Into those legs are concentrated an infinite magic. . . . But it is time to go home. It is time to re-enter the world of reality. Another leg appears, the eloquent left leg of the tall comedian, clothed round with heavy winter drawers and clasped by a Boston garter. It says: "After all, my friends, a leg is only a leg! Look at this and know the truth." The spell is broken. With a last laugh the audience files out, into the gusty, dusty, cold, harsh street of life.

1916

X. Out of the World

D

OWN near Washington Square is an odd little street called Greenwich Avenue. It is only half a mile long, but it is the stubbornest street in New York. It does not run parallel to its well-behaved sister streets, but wantonly goes straight north and south. This proceeding has confused and discouraged the other streets with which it comes in contact. Three great avenues, meeting it, stop altogether, refusing to cross it. And all the cross streets, penetrating it, become bewildered; they twist and waver. One of them, appropriately called Waverly Place, goes in four directions at once. Fourth Street and Twelfth Street lose their way and cross each other. Other streets, ashamed of finding themselves in such a place, disguise themselves under different names. It is a place where all sense of direction seems lost, all values confused. This is Greenwich Village.

Greenwich Avenue is in fact not so much a street as a wall, a breakwater holding back the mighty tides of commerce that flow up and down the eastern side of the island. Under the shelter of this guard

ing wall, safe from intrusion, a little piece of older New York has been left as it was built. In those crooked streets the old buildings stand, with their great rooms, high ceilings, deep-embrasured windows and cosy fireplaces. An Italian quarter encroaches vividly and noisily to the south. The families which once lived here have long since fled. The buildings are on the agents' hands. So it happened that a few years ago the tribe of artists and writers who inhabited Washington Square South overflowed into odd, quiet, deserted little Greenwich Village. With that the existence of the Village as a Free State, independent of the normal authority of New York City, began.

The Village has its literary traditions, harking back to the days when Poe wrote fragile lyrics and vitriolic criticisms in a little house on Carmine Street. There are various literary and artistic shrines to visit, including the "Working Girls' Home," where one can talk to the bartender about John Masefield, who used to sweep out and look after the babies for the proprietor's wife. But the present Greenwich Village is newer than that.

Newer and wilder and more futuristic in colouring. The violet ceilings, green walls, and cadmiumyellow tables in the Village restaurants, which chiefly excite the awe of the visitors piloted through its mysteries at nightfall, are no older than the outbreak of the war. The artists who came back re