It is not many years since Bohemia ate chiefly in the side streets, at restaurants such as Enrico's, Baroni's--there are a dozen such places. They still exist, but the Village is dropping away from them. They are very good and very cheap, and the tourist--that is, the uptowner--thinks he is seeing Bohemia when he eats in them, but not many of them remain at all characteristic. Bertolotti's is something of an exception. It is a restaurant of the old style, a survival of the days when all Bohemian restaurants were Italian. La Signora says they have been there, just there on Third Street, for twenty years. If you are a newcomer you will probably eat in the upstairs room, in cool and rather remote grandeur, and the pretty daughter with the wondrous black eyes will serve you the more elaborate of the most extraordinarily named dishes on the menu. But if, by long experience, you know what is pleasant and comfortable you will take a place in the basement cafe. At the clean, bare table, in the shadow of the big, bright, many-bottled bar, you will eat your _Risotta alla Milanese_, your _coteletti di Vitelle_, your _asparagi_--it's probably the only place in the city where they serve asparagus with grated cheese--finally your _zambaione_,--a heavenly sort of hot "flip," very foamy and seductive and strongly flavoured with Marsarla wine. If you stand well with the house you may have the honour to be escorted by the Signora herself--handsome, dignified, genial, with a veritable coronal of splendid grey hair--to watch the eternal bowling in the alley back of the restaurant. I have watched them fascinated for long periods and I have never learned what it is they are trying to do with those big "bowling balls." They have no ninepins, so they are not trying to make a ten-strike. Apparently, it is a game however, for now and then a shout of triumph proclaims that someone has won. He orders the drinks and they go at it again. "But, what _is_ it?" I asked the Signora. "Eh--oh--just a _Giocho di Bocca_," she returned vaguely, "a game of bowls--how should I know?" Beyond the bowling alley is a long, narrow yard with bushes. It would make quite a charming summer garden with little tables for after-dinner coffee. But the Signora says that the _Chiesa_, there at the back of it, objects. The _Chiesa_, I think, is the Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square. Just why they don't want the Signora to have tables in her own back yard is not clear. She, being a Latin, shrugs her shoulders and makes no comment. Standing in the darkness, there is a real freshness in the air; there is also a delicious, gurgling sound, the music of summer streams. "How lovely!" you whisper. "What a delightful, rippling sound." "Yet, it is the ice plant of the big hotel," says La Signora sweetly.