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CHAPTER II
"A pleasant land, not fenced with drab stucco, like Tyburnia or Belgravia; not guarded by a huge standing army of footmen; not echoing with noble chariots; a land of chambers, billiard-rooms, supper rooms; a land where soda-water flows freely in the morning; a land of lotus-eating (with lots of cayenne pepper); of pulls on the river; of delicious readings of novels, magazines, of saunterings in many studios; a land where men call each other by their Christian names; where most are poor, where almost all are young."
Thackeray's Philip.
It was not this old Bohemia that centred in the Square, but a new Bohemia, woman's Bohemia in a Puritan city.
In certain aspects the old land and the new are alike. This too is a country without geography, a kingdom of the air. It has no continuous history. All is shifting, changing, kaleidoscopic. Here the very furniture has an air of alertness, as if about to depart. The inhabitants, driven like sand across the desert, stop only for
"A moment's halt, a momentary taste
Of Being"
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