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part 1
In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places."
在华盛顿广场西边的一个小地区，街道已经变得疯狂，把自己分割成了叫做“广场”的小条。
These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two.
An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street.
一位艺术家曾在这条街上发现了一个宝贵的可能性。
Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!
假设一位收账员拿着颜料、纸张和画布的账单，在这条路线上穿行时，突然遇到自己回来，而账上一分钱都没有付！
So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents.
于是，那些搞艺术的人很快就悄悄地来到了古雅的老格林威治村，寻找朝北的窗户、十八世纪的山墙、荷兰式的阁楼和低廉的房租。
Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."
然后他们从第六大道进口了一些锡制杯子和一两个火锅，形成了一个“殖民地”。
At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California.
They had met at the table dhte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico", and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.
That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers.
Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places."
Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman.
A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer.
But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.
One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.
"She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer.
" And that chance is for her to want to live.
This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly.
Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well.
Has she anything on her mind?"
"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.
"Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?"
"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."
"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor.
"I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish.
But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 percent from the curative power of medicines.
If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."
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