The House That Shadows Built (1928)

THE SOIL OF THE £ARTH 265 New York; the butcher, the banker, the grocer, the farmers on abutting lands bear Knickerbocker names. But alas, the realtor has of late discovered this charming Sleepy Hollow and wayside boardings are beginning to forecast its doom! This country home has become Zukor’s hobby. Eight months of the year he leads here an existence surrounded by sturdy comfort and unostentatious luxury. When winter banks the roads and locks the Hudson, he either makes one of his dashes to Europe or establishes himself in a hotel suite. For the rest of the year — four days a week he goes to the office by automobile or motor boat and works with all his vicious concentration, but Friday, Saturday, and Sunday he keeps for his own and stays on the farm. A round or two of golf, long walks wherein he inspects and plans, a game of bridge or a pre-view of a new film, much pleasant sociability — that has become his real life. A visitor found him regarding one of his tall fir trees, just felled for a flag pole. He looked up. “It’s a pity to kill a thing so beautiful,” he said, “ I like to preserve, not kill.” Then his eye wandered over the vistas of his broad acres. “There wouldn’t be much satisfaction about a place like this,” he commented, “if someone else did it all for you. Planning it yourself and seeing it grow — that’s the joy. I suppose I’ll be improving this farm until I die!” Here of late he has held his important conferences