The House That Shadows Built (1928)

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38 THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT For the rest, American life as he lived it was that of the Tompkins Square gang. They emphasized masculine values. No mediaeval monks regarded woman with more superiority and contempt. To appear on the streets with a girl was a sign of deplorable weakness; at the sight of a skirt, one closed his eyes and stilled his fluttering heart. When at last a member of the gang “got struck on a girl,” he signed his decree of banishment from selfrespecting masculine society. The only women in Adolph Zukor’s life were Mrs. Blau and his elderly female relatives. Sometimes the Blaus went picnicking on Sundays in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. This involved a journey of two or three hours by horse car or on foot; and it seemed to the boy of Tompkins Square like a trek into the remote wilderness. He went along only for politeness; his heart was back with the gang, boxing in the back yards. In that period, woods and trees and the out-of-doors called up only boresome memories of Ricse with its dead, unambitious atmosphere. He was drinking the life of the East Side pavements in great gulps; loving it, happy in it. “The cheerfulest boy I ever knew,” says Max Schosberg, who worked at the next bench. “Always singing Hungarian songs. Music is all right in its place, understand me, but I told him many times to shut up.” For once, Adolph Zukor of the creative will was drifting on the surface of life. This same Max Schosberg