'Tis an awkward thing to play with souls, - and, to my mind, Greenwich Village has a very personal soul that requires very personal and very careful handling. This little foreword is to crave pardon humbly if my touch has not been light, or deft, or sure. There are so many things that I may have left out, so many ways in which I must have erred. And I want to thank people too, - just here. So many people there are to thank I cannot simply dismiss the matter with the usual acknowledgment of a list of authorities - to which, by the bye, I have tried to cling as though they were life-buoys in a stormy sea of research There are the kindly individuals, - J.H. Henry, Vincent Pepe, William van der Weyde, J.B. Martin, and the rest, - who have so generously placed their own extensive information and collected material at my disposal. And there are the small army of librarians and clerks and secretaries and so on, who have given me unlimited patience and most encouraging personal interest.