Very wild was the life in the neighbourhood of Gun Street. There were constant feuds between Jews and Christians, battles with fists and sticks and stones. Old Jews were insulted and pelted by Christian youths, and the young Jews would take up their cause. There were violent disputes between landlords and tenants, husbands and wives, prostitutes and their bullies. Any evening, walking along Gun Street, you might hear screaming and growling in one of the little houses. Louder and louder it would grow. Suddenly the male voice would be silent, the female would rise to a shriek, the door would open, and out into the street would be propelled a half-naked woman. She would wail and batter on the door, and, if that were of no avail, she would go to the house of a friend and silence would come again. . . . Or sometimes a door would open and a man would be shot out to lie limp and flabby in the gutter. Harry, the second boy, took to this wild life like a duck to water. He practised with dumb-bells and learned the art of boxing, and so excited Mendel with his feats of strength that he too practised exercises and learned to stand on his hands, and cheerfully allowed his brother to knock him down over and over again in his ambition to learn the elements of defence and the use of the straight left. In vain: his brain was not quick enough, or was too quick. His hands would never obey him in time, but he dreamed of being a strong man, the strongest man in the world, who by sheer muscle should compel universal admiration and assume authority. In the family the child's superiority was acknowledged tacitly. He had his way in everything. He wanted such strange things, and was adamant in his whims. If he were not allowed to do as he wished, he lay on the ground and roared until he was humoured; or he would refuse to eat; or he would go out of the house with the intention of losing himself. As he was known all through the neighbourhood for his beauty that was impossible. He was an object of pride to the neighbours, and whenever he was found far from home, there was always some one who knew him to take him back. But Golda could not realize this, and she suffered tortures. The boy loved the streets and the shops, the markets with their fruit-stalls and fish-barrows, the brilliant colours in Petticoat Lane. He would wander drinking in with his eyes colour and beauty, shaking with emotion at the sight of the pretty little girls with their little round faces, their ivory skins, and their brilliant black eyes. Ugliness hurt him not at all. It was the condition of things, the dark chaos out of which flashed beauty. But cruelty could drive him nearly mad, and he would tremble with rage and terror at the sight of a woman with a bloody face or a man kicking a horse.