It is like stepping from Churchill’s on Broadway into the Fifth Avenue Cathedral, if one has spent the forenoon in the modern art galleries on the Avenue and then walks into Ehrich’s. Here is a good healthy commercial atmosphere dealing in the Renaissance. Whether the lights are turned out out of respect for the Annunciation which holds the stage with footlights before it or whether Mr. Ehrich recognizes that where people speak with more than bated breath and hushed voices as they do in museums, the lights ought to be lowered, is the question? Here you not only lower your voice, but you study the art of tiptoeing. Madonnas, saints’ pictures, and other pictures which will be sainted by virtue of their purchase prices are on the walls. Please pass the incense pot. 1916 ’Way Down in Greenwich Village The fad of false Bohemia in Greenwich Village has passed. The purple and orange brand of tearooms and of so-called gift shops where art lovers and artistic people from the Bronx and Flatbush assembled, have gone out of existence. The designers and manufacturers of astounding atrocities who called themselves “modern artists” have disappeared. True there are a few short-haired women left, who parade the streets in their unusual clothes, but they, too, will soon move to other parts of the city with the return of the soldiers, and will reassume their real calling in life. Workers and ambitious strivers have taken possession, once more, of the sacred grounds, where memories and hopes are holy possessions, where so many have worked and toiled and spread an evangel, now accepted universally. New places have sprung up where idlers find themselves isolated, where enthusiasm and sincerity is written on walls and faces. And people are doing things once more in Greenwich Village. Commercialism seems to have disappeared, and men are willing to help men. The Paint Box Mrs. Williams has opened an art gallery, the Paint Box, where anybody may exhibit, anybody who wishes to hang his or her pictures. Everybody is welcome to view the exhibits; who is willing to pay an obolus of ten cents. But it is worth it. And Mrs. Williams has to pay rent and light. Her idea is not new by any means. Five years ago I came to Washington Square and opened what was later called Bruno’s Garret. “Here are my walls,” I said. “Come and hang your pictures, if you are an artist. Here is my magazine, voice in it your opinion of any subject you may choose, if you are a writer. Here is an auditorium with comfortable chairs; come and recite your poems, face your critics, if you are a poet....”