In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run
crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places."
These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street
crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable
possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints,
paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet
himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!
So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came
prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century
gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some
pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and
became a "colony."
At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their
studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine;
the other from California. They had met at the table d'hte of an
Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory
salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio
resulted.
That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the
doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one
here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this
ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet
trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown
"places."
Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old
gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by
California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, shortbreathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely
moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small
Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.
One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a
shaggy, gray eyebrow.
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