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

by Gertrude Stein

  Many men and many women and some children are always thinking of what is good for them in their eating. For some of these then eating is living for some of these then eating is dying, some find in ways of eating the continuing of living some find in ways of eating putting off a little longer their ending but dying is always inside them, some of these then, the many men and many women and some children who have it in them to be always thinking about eating about what is good in it for them, some of these then have not in them any love of eating, some of them have it in them to be loving the eating going on inside them, Mr. Hersland was such a one but to himself it was never his loving the eating going on inside him that was important to him, it was his theories of eating, his changings, his beginning, new ways of finding ways of eating that were good for him, these were important to him.

  In Mr. Hersland's ways of eating his children felt it in him that he was often filled up with impatient feeling. They more and more had it in them to know it of him that he loved to have eating going on inside him and more and more they came to know it of him that he, often then, before ending with the eating, would be filled up with impatient feeling and then he would push his eating away from him.

  It was in Mr. David Hersland's ways of eating, his ways of doctoring, his ways of educating them, his ways of changing, that all three of his children, each one as they felt themselves inside them an individual being apart from others around them, began to feel it in them that the father of them was big in his beginning and soon then he would be full up with impatient feeling. This, the character in him, made a different impression on each one of the three of them and this will come out in them in the slow history of each one of them. The eldest Martha had it in her to be like him in never finishing but she was not then filled up with impatient feeling, she was not strong in a beginning she was not then as big as all the world as her father had it to be inside him. She had it in her in her later living to be often beginning, to be impatient but not to be full up with such feeling, she had it in her to be like him the father of them but she never had it in her to understand him, she had it in her to irritate in him his impatient feeling she had it in her always to be afraid of him but all this will come out later in the history of her as she grew older as she went away from all of them and then came back out of her trouble to him and always she was like him and always she could not understand him, always she could irritate the impatient feeling that he had always inside him then, always she was in a way afraid of the irritation in him that she always gave to him. The elder son Alfred had it in him not to be like his father in always beginning, beginning was not strong in him, there was more of his mother in him but he had it in him to be always in his later living full up with impatient feeling, he had no bigness in him as the father had in his beginnings, there was never any such bigness in him and always then he was full up with impatient feeling. He had it in him to see the bigness in his father in his beginnings and he had in him a great admiration for the big ways his father always had in him, he had never any such bigness inside him, always he felt it in his father and wanted to have it, too, inside him; more and more in his living he did not have any such bigness in him and later it was enough for him to be filled up with impatient feeling. This made a history for him. The younger one David had a bigness in him it was not like that in the father of them, it was not like the beginnings that the father always had in him, it was always in young David that he needed to have in him understanding of everything inside and around him, that he needed to have in him understanding every minute inside him why life was to him worth his living. His father never could understand it in him: his father's being full up with impatient feeling was always an irritation to him, his father's always beginning was always, to him, failing, he knew his father had big things in him but it was his being full up with impatient feeling that was irritating to David and there was always a little in him of contempt that his father was always beginning and then he would be full up with impatient feeling and then he would be changing and then he would push everything away from him.

  The three of them came then more and more to know it about the father of them that he had a great bigness in him, that he was strong in beginning, that he would soon then be full up with impatient feeling, that he would then push everything away from him or go away and leave it there unfinished behind him, that he then would be changing and soon then there would be in him a new beginning and he would then be to every one who saw him as big as all the world around him.

  This nature in him came out in him every minute in his living. He had many things in him. He had in him his wife, she was never very important to him, she was sometimes there as a tender feeling inside him, she was a woman for him when he needed to have one, she had in her an important feeling but this as far as he knew it was only a joke to him, he never brushed her away from before him, he never pushed her away from him, she was never existing for him except as a woman when he had need of one, sometimes as a tender feeling in him, sometimes as a joke to him, she never had any existence for him outside of him. When she was not to him inside him she was never existing for him and so he never brushed her away from before him. She would do things for the children, sometimes he got angry with her then, mostly he never knew she did them those things that he did not want that they should have done for them, he never thought about it except when he was angry with her for them, mostly she was not in any such way important to him. Then there was for him in his living then the making of his great fortune, for that he was always fighting and pushing men away from around him and trying to brush them away from before him, in this he had it in him, though here too he was always changing and beginning, here he had it more in him than in any other thing in his living, to keep on with his going, he was always changing and beginning but mostly he kept on going much more than he ever had it in him to keep on going to an ending in ways of eating in ways of doctoring in ways of educating the children. In his home being he had around him the many people who lived in the small houses near them, but they were not important to him, they were like the governesses and seamstresses and servants and dependents there in the house with him, his being with all of these then was part of his wife's living with them and this will soon now come out in the living his wife did with them and with him. His children were for him, as it often is with men, his children were for him always outside him part of the world he was handling, sometimes playing with them, sometimes angry with them, sometimes loving with them, sometimes using, mostly fighting, and always dropping or domineering.

  There were then living together Mr. David Hersland, his wife Fanny Hersland, their three children Martha and Alfred and David and in the house with them a governess a seamstress and the servants, in a part of Gossols where no other rich people were living. Near them were small houses with, for them, poor queer kind of people in them. Soon all of them living in the house came to know many of these, for them, poor queer people near them, some of these came to be a little dependent upon them, some of them came to be nearly all there was then of the three children's daily living that was important then to them.

  They were all living, this family then, in a pleasant house in a ten acre place where living was very pleasant for them. They did there a little fancy farming, they had a little grain and fruit trees and vegetable gardening, they had many kinds of trees and sometimes they chopped down one of them, they had dogs and chickens and sometimes ducks and turkeys in the yard then, they had horses and two cows and sometimes they had young ones from the horses and the cows and that was very interesting to all of them, sometimes they had rabbits and always they had dogs, often they had a number of men working for them to get the hay in, sometimes they would catch rats and mice in the barn and that was very exciting to the children and sometimes to the father of them, and all around the ten acre place to shut all these joys in was a hedge of roses and in the summer many people came to pick them and then the family would let the dogs loose to bark at them and scare them, someti
mes some one would come at night to steal fruit from them sometimes to steal a chicken and then there would be excitement for all of them and the dogs would be let loose to find the man but the dogs then were mostly not very anxious to get into danger with a strange man, they barked hard and that was all the danger there was for them or for the man who was stealing. And so they went on with the living all of them and mostly then their living was pleasant and interesting.

  They were then regular in their living, the father was already then often full up with impatient feeling but in the beginning of their living in Gossols on the ten acre place in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living, living was pleasant enough for all of them. Living was pleasant enough then for every one of them, living was often then more than pleasant enough for them, it was often full of joy to each one of them then, almost always it was pleasant enough there then to all of them.

  Living was pleasant enough for all of them. The father had in him then much of changing much of beginning, he had ways of eating ways of doctoring ways of educating the children and he was always changing in them and this changing and then being full up with impatient feeling was already then a part of all of their daily living. The mother had her life with her husband and her children and her important feeling with the governess and servants and seamstress and the dependents near them, she had in her also her feeling of right rich living. The children, all three of them had it in them to be, in their feeling, more, of them, the poor people who lived around them, than they were of the family living then, at least this other life was, to all three of them, more inside to them then. They had their regular living, they had their school, their father and their mother and the three of them had the relation of each one of the others of them toward them, they had a governess and servants and men working, around them, they had all the joys of country living, and they had each one of them inside beginning then their own individual feeling.

  Their father was always to all three of them, as it mostly is with men, their father was always to each one of them outside of them to them, part of the world to fear or fight, now and always for them. Sometimes they were very pleasant with him, sometimes loving to him, sometimes resisting to him, fighting or deceiving, always he was outside of them, always there was in him a danger to them, always they were never certain how far his anger might drive him, how far he would live his own life away from them. They never could have in them any such feeling about a woman or with children, it is only men who give to children this uncertain feeling, they never can know it about one of them how far the anger in him may drive him.

  Life was pleasant there then for all of them. Always then in some ways trouble came to be inside in each one of them. As I was saying, in the early days of their living the father had it in him to be changing, to be full up with impatient feeling but this only made a reason to him for making a new beginning. This came out in him every day in his daily living.

  As I was saying, they were regular enough in their daily living. The children had their schooling and that was mostly a regular thing with them, then they had various other ways of getting education and in these their father always had new ideas inside him.

  All of the three children were beginning to have in them their own individual feeling. This began early in each one of them as it mostly is with children who have freedom in them and a father full up with beginning to commence them. Each one of them had already then their own kind of trouble inside in them, each one of them had soon a feeling about the ways of educating the way of getting new ways for the education of them, about ways of eating, that their father had then and always in him.

  All three of them then began to have in them their own individual feeling, there was beginning soon in each one of them the being alone inside, each one of them in their own feeling. They were different each one of them from the others of them in the troubles they had then inside them, in the lonely feeling they had sometimes in them that they were alone each one in them, in the scared feeling they could have in them, in the hurt or angry feelings each one in their own way had inside them. They were different each one of them from the others of them in the troubles they had then inside them, in the lonely feeling they had sometimes in them that each one was alone inside and this was sometimes all they needed to content them. They were different each one of them in the troubles they had then inside them, in the feeling that they had each one of them toward the father of them, toward the mother of them, toward the governess and other people in the house with them, toward the people living in the small houses near them. Each one of them was very different inside from the others of them, in all their ways each one of them had different feelings from the others of them different ways of being alone inside in them, different ways of thinking feeling suffering and playing.

  As I was saying, in a way life was regular enough for all of them then in the ten acre place in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living cut off from all right rich being. As I was saying life was regular enough for all of them for the three children and the father and the mother of them. The children went to public school for their education. Their father had ideas about other things they should learn, other ways of doing besides the ways of the other children around them and it was in such things that he was always beginning.

  Then there was their eating and their doctoring and the father always had new ideas inside him, new ways of beginning in ways they should have of eating and the doctoring that was good for children.

  They were regular enough then in their daily living. The children were regular enough in their living, they were different each one of them from the other two of them, different in every thing in them for each one of them was of a different kind of being from the other two of them. The father and the mother mixed up in them made of each one of them a different kind of being from the others of them, this will come out more and more in them if they go on living as in old age they go on repeating what is inside them so that any one can know them. In their early living when they are no longer children this nature in them comes out less with repeating and so any one who knows them can know what is inside them. In children as it always is with young living there is much repeating but it is not then so surely themselves they are expressing, in their older living their repeating is then all that there is of them, when they are children their repeating does not tell what is really them, as young grown men and women it is much harder to know what is real in them but always they are telling, slowly they begin repeating, slowly we find it out about them what they have really inside them.

  As I was saying they were regular enough in their daily living, regular as living comes to be in later living, regular in repeating but, as I was saying, in the regular repeating in mostly all children there is less that is really from them more that is just part of the regular living around them.

  The three children had their regular school living.

  There are many ways of taking teaching and each one of the Hersland children had a different way of learning from the other two of them, a different way of feeling about teachers and teaching, a different way of having pride in them and this came out very early in their living, in the regular public school training. There are many ways of having pride inside in one and always in receiving teaching the different kind of pride shows in each one. Martha, Alfred and David each one had a kind of pride in them but it was a very different pride in each one of them, it made a very different relation for each one of them to the teachers in the public school and to the governess at home and to the children around them, to the father of them and sometimes, not very often, to the mother of them.

  The three of them Martha, Alfred and David had different ways of having pride in them in taking the teaching they had in school with the other children around them, in taking their father's ideas of things they should learn from the governess and other teachers he had to teach them.

  All three of them had many kinds of education because of him. Somet
imes they all three would be having just ordinary schooling. Sometimes all three would be having extra teaching, sometimes one or the other stopped going to school to try some other way of education that their father then thought would be good then for that one of them. Mostly though, in their younger living, they had all three of them fairly regular public school training and they had then each one their own feeling toward the life there with the teachers and the other children and this will come out in the history of each one. This will come out in the history of each one of them for I am thinking with each one of the three of them soon now there must be a beginning, I am thinking in each one of them soon there will be a beginning of a history of them from their beginning, and so slowly we can know it about them, each one of them, the real nature in them and the other kinds of nature mixed up in each one of them with the fundamental nature in them.

  Mostly then in their young living they had regular public school training. Sometimes their father would be strong in religion and then this would make for the children complications in their daily living.

  As I was saying in their younger living there was mostly a regular every day existence for them, in their younger living it was important to them that their father was as big as all the world around him, and it was then in him sometimes a little embarrassment to them, as I was telling, but mostly they liked it well enough the living with him and the things he was beginning and the ten acre place which was full of much joy then for all of them and the people in the small houses near them who were important then to all three of them in their daily living.