CHAPTER VII.
_Restaurants, and the Magic Door_ I What scenes in fiction cling more persistently in the memory than those that deal with the satisfying of man's appetite?
Who ever heard of a dyspeptic hero?
Are not your favourites beyond the Magic Door all good trenchermen?
-- ARTHUR BARTLETT MAURICE.
It was O.Henry, I believe, who spoke of restaurants as "literary landmarks." They are really much more than that--they are signposts, psychical rather than physical, which show the trend of the times--or of the neighbourhood.

I suppose nothing in Greenwich Village could be more significantly illuminating than its eating places.

There are, of course, many sorts.

The Village is neither so unique nor so uniform as to have only one sort of popular board.

But in all the typical Greenwich restaurants you will find the same elusive something, the spirit of the picturesque, the untrammelled, the quaint and charming--in short, the _different_! The Village is not only a locality, you understand, it is a point of view.