The obvious, every-day things that are easily believed are much the most likely to be untenable reports or the day dreams of imaginative chroniclers.

You are safe if you believe all the quaint and romantic and inconsistent and impossible things that come to your knowledge concerning the Village.

That is its special and sacred privilege: to be unexpected and always--yes, always without exception--in the spirit of its irrational and sympathetic role.

It needs Kipling's ambiguous "And when the thing that couldn't has occurred" for a motto.

And yet--and yet--like all true nonsense, this nonsense is rooted in a beautiful and disconcerting compromise of truth.
Cities do grow through their romances and their adventures.