Our Square and the People in It

(1917)

Preface:

WALLED in by slums stands Our Square, a valiant green space, far on the
flank of the Great City. Ours is an inglorious little world Sociologists
have-not yet remarked and classified us. The Washington Square romancers
who bold sentimental revel at the foot of Fifth Avenue reck nothing of
their sister park, many blocks to the east. But we are patient of our
obscurity. Close-knit, keeping our own counsel, jealous of our own
concerns, and not without our own pride of place, we live our quiet
lives, a community sufficient unto itself. So far as may be for mortals
under the sway of death and love and fate, we maintain ourselves with
little change amid the kaleidoscopic shiftings of the surrounding
metropolis. Few come into Our Square except of necessity. Few go out but
under the same stem impulsion. Some of us are held by tradition, some by
poverty, some by affection, and some through loyalty to what once was
and is no more. Here we live, and here hope to die, “the kind hearts,
the true hearts that loved the place of old.” And of all, there is no
truer heart or kinder than that of the gentle, shrewd, and neighborly
old dominie through whose lips I tell these tales, the real historian of
the folk whom I, too, have known and loved in Our Square.

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