The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress

by Gertrude Stein

  All the Hissen people had it strongly inside them, the family way of good living. They were all in their natural way of family thinking gentle cheerful little men and women. They lived in their natural way of being, without any strong ambition. It was enough for them to hold to their tradition, the dignity and beauty of right living and right thinking, they never needed to go out to find ambition or excitement in their living, they had excitement and dignity inside them from their family and the gentle pride that made them; that, sometimes, came in sparkling, sometimes in angry flashes from them but mostly they were hurt not angry when any bad thing happened to them. They lived in their natural way of being without any strong ambition or excitement, they were each in their little circle joyful in the present, they lived and died in mildness and contentment.

  They had never any one of them an important feeling of themselves inside, them to arise of itself from within them. Such a kind of important feeling would not be in them in the way of living it was natural to any one of them to be having. Mrs. Fanny Hersland never would have had such a feeling if she had lived on in Bridgepoint, going on always with the right kind of being, she would often have had an angry feeling, sometimes with her family, or her husband, or for them when things happened to them to worry them, and sometimes it would be a hurt feeling that would lead to bitter biting talking, sometimes it would be a hurt feeling that would make her sad not angry when any bad thing happened to them and always it would be she who had the feeling and the dignity and the good well to do husband and the simple and expensive clothing, and the nice children and she was the mother of them, but with all this strong feeling, with this being proud or angry or sad or stubborn or happy in her feeling, she would never have that kind of important feeling that she learned to be having in Gossols, first with Sophie Shilling as a beginning and then in Gossols later in the ten acre place where they were always staying cut off from being really a part of the right way of living.

  She would have been a part, if she had gone on with her natural living, she would have been a part of the right way of Hissen being; she could have been in her feeling angry or sad or stubborn or happy, or biting in her talking, or hurt when any bad thing happened to them, she could have all this in her feeling and yet not have that kind of sense of importance to herself inside her that comes with the individual being.

  The little religious father who had made them all, all his children, he could not make others not living with him feel him, the little religious father who had made all of his children feel him had such an important feeling inside him, it was his religion gave it to him, it did not arise of itself from within him. It was only being as he felt himself, all there was of religion, could give him such a feeling of being important to himself inside him. He could make all his children feel him, he could in a way make them fearful of him and the religion in him, and all the religion was of him and he was in himself all there was of religion, and so it was that he had the important feeling inside in him, but this did not make any but his children feel him, it did not arise of itself inside him and he could not make any one who did not live with him feel it in him.

  The little dreary mother with her trickling kind of weeping that she had every moment in her living, even, as when it sometimes happened, she was laughing, this dreary little trickling woman had with her sadness in religion and in her trickling weeping that kept on always wetting all the sorrow there could be in living, this trickling dreary little Mrs. Hissen, who wept out all the sorrow for her children, had in her an important kind of being that was almost an important feeling, and this almost an important feeling did not come to her as in her husband from religion, it arose up inside in her with her trickling weeping.

  Almost it was really an important feeling and it was the having too, such an almost important feeling that made her daughter Mrs. Hersland have really such a feeling when it came to her there in Gossols to have a, for her, not natural way of living, and it first came as a beginning with the old lady Mrs. Shilling and her fat daughter Sophie Shilling and the other daughter Pauline Shilling.

  With all the other Hissen men and women there mostly was not such an important feeling inside in them, only with the oldest of them who had religion as the father had inside him, and with her it was as with him, the important feeling did not arise of itself inside her, and only her children could feel it in her, the way of being important that being all there was of religion gave their mother as a power over them in her.

  Mostly the Hissen men and women the children of the father and religion and the trickling dreary mother who hardly knew how she came to make them, in all these Hissen little men and women there was never very much of such important feeling. It was only way off there in Gossols, shut off from a lively feeling of well to do living, shut off from her friends and family feeling, that Fanny Hissen, Mrs. Hersland, could find in herself a really important feeling.

  All the little Hissen people had very strong family feeling. All together they were important to themselves in their feeling. Not that they did not each one alone have strong feeling and each one of course had in them a different way from all the others of them of being loving or having an angry feeling. They all of course had in them their own individual way of thinking and of doing only they never had inside them each one for himself the real important feeling.

  Some of them had often a very angry feeling, some had fierce tempers and sometimes bitter biting ways of talking, some had very stubborn ways inside them, and some had it mostly in them to be only hurt not angry when any bad thing happened to them. Yes they had each one of them their own way of feeling thinking and of doing but they had not any of them inside in them an important feeling of themselves inside them as the father had in religion and as the dreary mother almost had with her continuous way of trickling crying.

  Some of the children, as I was saying, had it a little in them. The oldest daughter from her dull stubborn religion that was for her all there really was of living had it in herself and it gave her power over her young children. One, a little younger, Fanny, Mrs. Hersland, had from a, to her, not a natural way of living, and from having had it strongest of them all from the beginning, the almost important feeling that the mother had with her constant trickling, from being cut off from a lively feeling of right being, she had almost before ending a really important feeling. And one next to the youngest of them had a little such a feeling from almost an individual way of thinking, it never really came to a fruition but as with the mother in the constant trickling this one with constant and very nearly an individual kind of thinking had almost a real important feeling.

  The Hissen family altogether were, and very really, important to themselves inside them in their feeling. Each one of them had always for himself and all the others of them a dignity and a gentle way of making himself important to the others of them and to every one who ever came to know them. They were all of them, each one in the gentle dignity they all had in them, important to every one who ever came near to them. With some of them, their eyes flashed often with a sharp angry almost fierce feeling, that things happening could arouse within them, often with some of them they would be hurt and then their mouths were drooping. In some of them it was a very stubborn feeling that was the deepest thing inside them after the family way that made all them, and these were the hardest to live with and never to be forgiven when they had been hurt or angry by something some one had done to them. But mostly the Hissen men and women were gentle cheerful little men and women, mostly they lived without ambition or excitement and mostly they were each in their little circle cheerful in the present. Mostly they lived and died in mildness and contentment.

  Until they were all really grown men and women, until the women each one found a husband to control them and the men went into a business and were independent of him, until they were in this sense grown men and women, until he died the father always wanted and succeeded in shutting them all up to be always with him. This was not in him from any small feeling ins
ide him but from the important feeling he had in him of being all there was for him of religion and it was his sense of the right way for them to be as children that made him shut them up so and keep them there close to him.

  Later when the daughters were married and the sons working were independent of him and had left him, he never in any way wished to interfere with them, with their feeling, their religion, their way of thinking or their doing. When they were with him, they belonged there and he held them shut in with him, when they left him, grown up men and women, it was no longer for him to act upon them, they no longer were his necessary way of living. It was never his children that gave him an important feeling, his power over them when they were shut up with him never gave him any kind of an important feeling. No it was his being all there was of religion that gave him his important feeling, not his wife nor his children nor any power he had from them nor the power he never had had with any one who did not live shut up with him. Nothing in such a way could give him an important feeling. They were his daily living, the necessary right way of doing, they were not important to his feeling, not in themselves nor in any power in him that came from them either as they were or as he made them. Such things could never come to him as an important feeling of himself inside him. It was only being all there was of religion that gave him such an important feeling.

  It was queer unless you really could understand him, could really see how the important feeling came to be in him, it was certainly queer to just ordinary thinking to see a man who had been so rigid with his children, keeping them shut up with him, making them live every minute as he would have them, having no power with anyone who did not live so with him, it was queer that when these children came to be grown men and women, that is independent and living away from him, that he never in any way wanted to keep his hold on them. He had for them then as much affection as he ever had had for them, he always went to see them and was open and friendly with them but not in any way had he ever any kind of desire in him to interfere with them or their way of living or their thinking or their doing, no not even with their feeling in religion. They were his children, yes, but not now a part of his necessary living, even when, as he did some years before dying, even when he was living with one of them who with her husband had very different ways of living, of thinking, and of feeling, in religion than he had it in him, even then he never interfered with them who were now independent of him, grown men and women. The only thing that gave him an important feeling was being all there was of religion. When his children were shut in with him they were a part of him, they had to do with his necessary way of being, they had to live in his important feeling, with his being all there was of religion, but when they had left him, when later he even lived with them, they were then no longer a part of him, he was then, all alone, all there was of religion. By that time his wife too had left him, had died away and left him. Always in her living she had never been quite of him, she had been cut off from him, by her having from her constant trickling crying an almost important feeling. And so this old man who was to himself all there was of religion, to whom religion and himself was all there was of living, who had kept his children close shut up with him every minute of their living until they were for him grown up men and women this old man who never had had any power in him for any one who was not shut up with him, this old man had a queer way of being almost perfect in his toleration of things that were all different from his way of thinking and feeling and believing, even with religion, even with his children, now when they were independent of him.

  So strong was it in him, this tolerating spirit toward them when they were grown men and women to him, that even when later in their living they sometimes asked him to guide them he would refuse it to them, for they were then apart from him, he was all there was of religion, religion was all there was of being for him; that made him important to himself inside him. It was not for him to guide them they who were apart from him, they were, then as all the world always had been, he had no power over anything not shut up with him, and so he had a tolerant spirit for everything that was not him, for his children now when they were grown up and independent even when as it happened later he was living with some of them.

  One of them who had come to be grown up for him was the Fanny Hissen who had married David Hersland the man who was as big as all the world in his beginning and strong to prove this, his feeling, on all who met him, not only on them who were shut up with him, everybody always felt this in him, once he was as big as all the world around him, he was it, it was in him, there was no difference with it inside him or outside for him; in his beginning with Fanny Hissen when she first began her living with him she wanted to do as he would have her do in all things. It came to them, in religion, that his ways were not the ways that had been right for her to have when she was living with her family, when they had been all living, shut in with the father who was all there was of religion.

  It came one day to a very great division between her husband's way of thinking and feeling in religion and her father's ways as she had learned to have them inside her when she with all her sisters and her brothers were living shut up with him.

  She wrote to him and asked him, she said her husband wanted her to go with him and it was not as she had been taught by him her father, she did not feel it wrong to do this thing but she could not do it without asking her father, who had never let his children do any such thing when they were shut in with him. What should she do, she would not make for herself such a decision, she would ask him, was it wrong for her to do this thing, to go with her husband to such a meeting.

  The old man replied. “My dear child. There was once a priest, a good man. Once a member of his church came to him and said I have been thinking can I do this thing, can I go to a barber's shop and get shaved on a Sunday morning, is it wrong for me to do this thing. The priest said, yes he must forbid it to him, he must not go to a barber's shop on a Sunday morning and get a man to shave him, it was wrong for him to do this thing, it would be a sin in him. Two Sundays after the man met his priest coming out of a shop shaved all fresh and clean. But how is this, the man said to him, you told me that it was forbidden, you told me, when I asked you, that I should not do this thing, that it would be for me a sin. Ah! said the priest to him, that was right, I told you I must forbid you to go Sunday morning to a shop and get some one to shave you, that it would be a sin for you to do this thing, but don't you see, I did not do any asking.”

  Later in the old man's living, when his wife had died away and left him, he came to live with a daughter who had not any kind of an important feeling to herself inside her, neither from a religion to be all her nor from a constant rising up inside her as the dreary mother had it in her to have an almost important feeling to be inside her from the constant trickling of her, the father later came to live with this daughter who had a gentle dignity and good ways in her from the sweet nature of her not from any important feeling in her, and she and the man who was married to her, both, though they had respect in them for the father, and goodness and a delicate feeling to consider all who ever had to do with them, though they were glad to do for him everything he wanted them to be doing yet they had together very different ways of thinking, of feeling, and of living than he had known it to be right to have all his life in his necessary living.

  The old father, strong as he always had been in his nature, firm in being for himself all there was of religion, knowing to his dying that religion was all there was of living, yet never in any way was he ever interfering in the living and the feeling and the thinking of his daughter or her husband or any of their children or any of his own children who were there in the same house with him. Now, for him who was no longer leading in a house with others shut up with him, with him who was all there was of religion, for him, now, that they were apart from him being grown men and women to him, even though they were all together every minute with him, although he was up to the last moment of dying as strong as ever in the faith o
f him, to be himself and to be all there was of religion, yet now it was not for him to ever in any way interfere with any one of them. He never found out anything that was happening, anything that he would not wish to know that any one of them was doing. What a man does not know can never be a worry to him. This was his answer to his children whenever any one of them wanted to explain anything to him or to get him to agree to any new thing in their living.

  And so he went on to the last minute of his living, never having had any power in him over any one who was not shut up with him and a necessary part of his living, strong always in his being to himself all that were was of religion, strong in knowing that religion was all there was of being. And so he went on with his living, now never interfering with anybody's living, now that he was himself for himself all there was of living, all there was of religion, and religion always was all there was of living. And so he went on to his dying and through his being so all himself all there was of living and of religion, he was in his old age full of toleration, and slowly in his dying it was a great death that met him. He was himself all there was of him, all there was of religion, and religion was all there was of living for him, and so the dying from old age that came slowly to him all came together to be him. He was religion, death could not rob him, he could lose nothing in his dying, he was all that there was of him, all there was of religion, and religion was all there was of living, and so he, dying of old age, without struggling, met himself by himself in his dying, for religion was everlasting, and so for him there could be no ending, he and religion and living and dying were all one and everything and every one and it was for himself that he was all one, living, dying, being, and religion.