“Come to us, ye who do not know where ye are—­ye who live among strangers in the houses of dismay and self-righteousness.  Poor, awkward ones!  How bewildered and be-devilled ye go!...  In what prisons are ye flung?  To what lowliness are ye bowed?  How are ye ground between the laws and the customs?  Come away!  For the dance has begun lightly, the wind is sounding over the hill....”

CHAPTER IX

And Then More Villagers

...  A meeting place for the few who are struggling ever and ever for an art that will be truly American.  An art that is not hidebound by the deadening influences of a decadent Europe, or the result of intellectual theories evolved by those whose only pleasure in existence is to create laws for others to obey ... an art, let us say, that springs out of the emotional depths of creative spirit, courageous and unafraid of rotting power, or limited scope ... an art whose purpose is flaming beauty of creation and nothing else.—­HAROLD HERSEY, in The Quill (Greenwich Village).

Someone said today to the author of this book: 

“How can you write about the Village?  You don’t live here.  Live here a few years and then perhaps you’ll have something to say!”

It is by way of answer that the following little tale is quoted; it is an old tale but, after a fashion, it seems to fit.

Once upon a time an explorer discovered a country and set about to write a book concerning it.  Then the people of the country became somewhat indignant and asked: 

“Why should a stranger, who has scarcely learned his way about in our land, attempt to describe it?  We, who have lived in it and know it, will write its chronicles ourselves.”

So the traveller sat down and shut the book in which he had begun to write and said: 

“Well and good.  Do you write about your country, the land you have lived in so long and know so well, and we will see what we shall see.”

So the people of the country—­or their scribes, a most gifted company—­began the task of describing that which they knew and loved, and had lived in and with since birth.  And after they were through they took the fruits of their joint labours to an assemblage of kings in a far-off place.

And the kings said, after they had read: 

“This is beautiful literature, but what is the country like,—­that of which they write?”

So one of their chamberlains, who was a plain soul, said sensibly: 

“Your Majesties, there is only one fault to find with the book written by these people about their country, and that is that they know it too well to describe it well.”

Therefore one of the kings said, “How can that be truth?  For what we are close to we must see more clearly than others who view it from afar.”

So the sensible chamberlain took a certain little object and held it close to the eyes of one of the kings, and cried, “What is this?”