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

by Gertrude Stein

  Knowing a map and then seeing the place and knowing then that the roads actually existing are like the map, to some is always astonishing and always then very gratifying. To some there is the same thing in living and to such a one seeing each one they are knowing as young ones and older ones and very old ones, and seeing them then as having in them the kind of being that hearing others talking, and reading what others have written, makes every one know is the nature of human being knowing this then in every one at each period in them is to some as I was saying astonishing and then gratifying, is to some as I was saying knowing a place after knowing a map of such a place is to some to their feeling an astonishment and then a gratification. This is then always there all their living in some, that is to say these ones come to know in those of them that are of their own generation, not children being, though in some even that is known to them by hearing and reading, in other children around them, they being then children, in some of such of them then there is a self-consciousness then enough to make them know then even when they are children children being, it comes to be more strongly in them then when they are young men and women, it comes to be to them then almost overwhelming as astonishment and gratification in their middle living to find themselves and those of their own age around them looking like men and women in their middle living, acting, living like men and women in their middle living, this is then to them very astonishing, to some it is gratifying, to some of such of them it is terrifying, they are then, they themselves and others around them as they remember their fathers and their mothers when they themselves were children, this is then as I say to many of such of them who have this in them very astonishing, to some very gratifying, to some even terrifying, and there are then all kinds of feeling in between about this thing.

  This then, this realising is strongest in men and women of those around them of their own age in living when they themselves are having in them then that living that is to them the thing they have known like a map of living and then they know it in those around them of their own time of living and in themselves then and to many very many it is then astonishing, to some then gratifying, to some then almost terrifying, to some it is overwhelming then to know it really then inside really completely then inside them, that all living is always repeating, that they are like every one else who has or ever has had or ever will have in them middle living, like them in the way they are then in their looks, in their troubles with their health or happiness or working or children. It is to many then overwhelming that they know then that everything they have been hearing or reading about living is true of them, that they are in their middle living, that all those they are knowing of about the same age as they are themselves then are then also in that middle living that they have known always from reading, from seeing, from hearing and that is to many very astonishing, to some who have it in them to love repeating in living very gratifying, to some who are beginning to be a little weary then very satisfying, to many then almost or completely terrifying. This is then there, the understanding of being in middle living in such a one, and then there is in such a one an understanding of men and women they are remembering who were when they knew them in middle living, there is then in such of them a new realisation of every one, for every one must have sometime in them middle living.

  There are then many who have sometime in them the feeling I have been describing with a map and seeing the place and knowing then the roads are really existing like the maps of them. This is to very many always each time astonishing.

  They are some who have then a feeling of knowing other children, knowing themselves, they themselves being then children, as being like the children they know from reading from hearing people talking about being in children. Mostly every one does not know it in this way, the being in children, many know it only from remembering themselves and others who were around them then, from knowing children, from knowing sometime every one, from having children of their own or from other ones around them having them, from knowing some in their later living whom they remembered as children but did not realise then the being in them. Mostly every one a little sometime in their living realise themselves and others as being like children, like men, like women they have come to know in reading or from hearing about them.

  There is then the knowing kinds in men and women from the character in them, the nature in them, the mind, the passion, the way of winning, working, loving, dying, having religion in them, the way of giving and the way of receiving, and the way of taking, and the way of accepting, and the way of escaping in them; there are many ways of knowing kinds in men and women from habits of training, of grammar, of playing and washing and working in them, and doing nothing; there are then many very many ways of knowing kinds in men and women, from prettyness and ugliness in them, from ways of dressing, from all the ways they have of being and then there are ways of knowing men and women as being in their beginning, as babies and children, and then being young grown men and women, and then men and women in their middle living, and then men and women in their ending.

  Some find it harder to decide about children what kind of being they have in them, than about men and women as young men and women, than men and women as men and women in their middle living, as men and women in their ending. Some find it harder to know what kind of being they have in them, the women than the men, some find it harder to know what kind of being they have in them the men than the women. Some find it harder to know the being men and women have in them when they are young men and women than at any other time in their living, some find it harder with men and women in their middle living then when the disposition in them is changing to middle living disposition, in many to impatient irritation, some find it harder to know real being in men and women in their ending then when loving, feeling, religion, have queer ways of showing in them, always then some are very confusing sometime to some, mostly every one has some way of making kinds in men and women, mostly every one finds some one sometimes confusing, mostly every one sometime finds some one very confusing not easy then to be certain of the kind of being one has in her or in him, mostly every one comes to a decision sometime about the kind of being in each one, some come very nearly to never deciding about some one, some as I was saying find it harder about children what being they have in them, about men and women when they are beginning than at any other time in their living.

  Some have their real being in them in young living, some do not have it then in them. Now there will be some description of young living in some.

  Now there will be some description of young living, feeling, talking, thinking being. Some have their real being in young living, some do not have it then in them. All have their real being in their young living to some, not any one has their real being in young living to some. To begin then with a little description of many ways of feeling being in young living, of feeling, thinking, the being, understanding the being of men and women when they are in their beginning, when they are babies, when they are children, when they are growing into being young men and young women.

  To begin then again with a little description of feeling, thinking kinds in babies and in children, in understanding the being and kinds in being in men and women when they are in their beginning, when they are babies, when they are children.

  Some then are understanding kinds in children always. Some then have more feeling for kinds in children for being in children than for being in men and women in grown up men and women. Some find being in children more confusing for to them the being in children is the being in men and women in beginning and so to them children are confusing as being natures in beginning. Children are confusing and deceiving to many. These then are to some very difficult to knowing, the being in children is to some a very difficult thing to be understanding. The being in children is very confusing to any one wanting to understand being in men and women. The being in children is then often very confusing, this is because being in beginning the nature in them is then almost hidden, or disguised, or
uncertain, or changing, or too loudly in them. Children are then often very confusing for they are often all of them doing the same thing and the nature in them does not affect them, they have many of them then not their own way of eating, drinking, playing, laughing, crying, having angry feeling, kicking, screaming, loving, deceiving, some have then their own individual way of doing but mostly in children it is a general kind of action a general kind of way of acting when any one does anything to them and they are not liking this thing some one has been doing to them. Always it is hard to know the real being in any one from knowing things any one has been doing, with children it is even more confusing, the same kind of acting is done by children that have every different kind of nature in them when they are happy, when they are playing, when they are cheating, when they have angry or injured feeling. Mostly then the being in children, the individual being in each one is very difficult for any one even living with them to be knowing, it is often almost hidden, or disguised, or uncertain, or changing, or too loudly in them, and so they have not then really in them individual being. Slowly then they come to have in them more and more their individual being. Slowly more and more individual being comes out of them as more and more they are themselves inside them.

  It is very hard to know of any one the being in them from one or two things they have been doing that some one is telling about them, from many things even that they have been doing and that one knows of them. Knowing real being in men and women is a very slow proceeding and always more and more this is very certain.

  As I was saying it is almost harder to know it in children and young men and women the being in them than in older men and women. Not every one thinks that this is certain. As I was saying many many kinds of little boys that in their later living have very different ways of reacting when some one has done something and they do not like the thing some one has been doing, many many men who have very different ways of acting when some one has done something they are not liking, very different natures in them, when they were little boys and some little boy, some one did something they were not liking, they showed no signs of reacting to it then and then later they hit out and often the little boy the some one who had done the thing to them they were not liking had forgotten, so long was the little boy who was not liking the thing the other one did to him in responding. This is true also of women, many kinds of women with very different kinds of natures in them, when they were little girls and some one did something to them they were not liking showed at first no reaction and then they showed angry feeling when every one had forgotten the thing the little girl had not been liking.

  In some men, in some women, this shows real nature in them, in some it is just that nature is in them in beginning, and so children are very confusing to the understanding.

  In some the nature in them is clearer when they are very young, in some when they are young, in some when they are not so young, in some when they are old ones. Always in each one it is there and repeating, sometime some one knows it in each one.

  As I was saying some have more feeling for kinds in men and women when men and women are in beginning, some have more feeling for kinds in men and women when men and women are babies than in any other time in their living, some have more feeling for kinds in men and women when men and women are children than at any other time in their existing. As I was saying, to some, being in children is very confusing because the nature in them is in its beginning.

  As I was saying it is very hard telling from knowing something some one did sometime, the nature in them. As I was saying it is very difficult to know the nature in a man or in a woman from knowing even quite a number of things they are doing; it is even harder to know the nature in children from the action in them as I have been just saying, that is true of many children, not of all of them by any means and that must never be forgotten.

  As I was saying Martha Hersland when she was a little one a very little one and the others were running ahead and she had the umbrella for one of them and she was struggling to catch up with the rest of them and they were disappearing and she was being filled fuller always with angry feeling and resentment and desperation and she was crying out, “I will throw the umbrella in the mud,” and nobody was hearing and she was repeating again and again and then in a moment of triumphing she did throw the umbrella in the mud and then she went on crying and saying, “I did throw the umbrella in the mud,” this is a description of an action that many very different kinds of children could have been doing when they were left behind struggling, Martha Hersland did this and she was a little girl then and slowly now there will come to be a complete description of the nature in her that this I have been just describing does not now help very much to be understanding.

  Now there will be some description of Martha Hersland in her young living and the children she knew when she was beginning living.

  I was telling of the living of the Hersland family in Gossols on a ten acre place and of people living in small houses near them and it was then that Martha Hersland was a child and was knowing children. She knew some children at the public school near them where she and her brothers had their American education, some children that were living then in the small houses near the ten acre place where the Hersland family were living then as I was telling and some other children who knew these children. She knew some children at the public school. Some children were living near them in the small houses as I was telling and she knew them and knew some other children who knew these children. And then she knew some children who sometimes came to see them, the Hersland children, who were the kind of children she naturally should have been knowing, from the kind of people Mr. and Mrs. Hersland should naturally be knowing, but these children were never important in her living. Mostly then she was knowing children living near her, and children knowing these children.

  Mostly then, Martha, and as I was saying this was mostly true of all three of them of all three of the Hersland children, Martha when she was in the beginning of her living was more of them, the children, the people living in the small houses near them and the friends of these people, of these children, than she was of her family living, of her mother's and father's country house living. She was then not at all of the living that would naturally have been her kind of living, of well-to-do living.

  She was then, as a child, as a young girl, almost until she was a young woman of the being of those living in small houses near them.

  Much description of the being in the children living in the small houses near the ten acre place where the Herslands were living and of children living in other parts of Gossols and knowing these children will be in the description of the beginning being of the youngest of the three Hersland children, in the history of David Hersland. Now in the history of the beginning of the being of Martha the oldest of the three Hersland children there will be more a description of how other children felt the being in her, how every one felt the being in her and so there will be a description of her as every one who knew her felt her, now, in her beginning, and then, later in her living.

  There will then be much description of the being in the children living in the small houses near them and of many other children in the history of the beginning of the youngest of the Hersland children who was really more of them, these children, than his brother or his sister ever had been. Now this is a description of the beginning of the being in the eldest of the Hersland children, in Martha Hersland and there will be now much description of how every one ever knowing Martha felt the being in her, other children knowing her, her governesses and the servants and her brothers and her teachers and her mother and her father and later other girls and boys and later her lover and later her husband and then very many who then knew her and then again her brothers and her father, and again then everybody who then and on from then to her ending knew her.

  All three of the Hersland children as I was saying were when they were children very much of the living of the people living in small houses near them. The younges
t of the three Hersland children David Hersland was so entirely of them when he was in his beginning, of them, of the children at school with him, of children knowing these children and the children living in the small houses near the Hersland family then, was so entirely of the being of all these children that in the description of the being in him there will be very much description of the being in many of them. In the child being of the second Hersland child the elder son, Alfred Hersland there was also a little of this that he was very much of the living of the people around him but it was not in him so completely inside him as it was in the being of the younger son David Hersland, the youngest of the three Hersland children. Then Alfred Hersland was very much sooner through with having it in him the living of the people around him as part of the being in him than either his younger brother or his older sister. He was then really less of them the poor people around him than either of the other two Hersland children but nevertheless in his young living in his playing and in his being interested then, he too was very much of them the poor people near them, though it was never really very deep in him and it was very soon all ended for him. He was then, Alfred Hersland in a sense in his being less really of the being of the people living in small houses near him, more of the people it was natural for him to know in his living though he was not of them at all in his beginning than his brother or his sister and this will come out very clearly in the history of him that will be written after the history of Martha has reached its completion. It will be interesting then to know it in each one of the Hersland children just how they were of the living of the, for them, poor people near them.