Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories Men and Masculinity Quotes

[Morris Finestein] was only a quick, skipping little Jew who cried if you called him Christ-killer, and ate light bread and canned salmon every day. [...] since then if a man were prissy in any way, or if a man ever wept, he was known as a Morris Finestein. (Ballad.28)

He did not wear trousers such as ordinary men are meant to wear, but a pair of tight-fitting little knee-length breeches. (Ballad.56)

He regarded each person steadily at his own eye-level, which was about belt line for an ordinary man. (Ballad.57)