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

by Stein, Gertrude

  The three Hersland children were of them, they were always of the people with the people who lived in the small houses near them, they were of them, they lived with them, they had the feeling of never asking any questions of them, they had it in them to never ask any questions about any of them, they had never any feeling to know anything about any of them that was not shown then in the daily living, no one of such people as they knew there around them ever asked such questions of any other one of them. Each one in a family then and every family of them together then always lived on in their daily living, there was a husband or a father to them or there was none, there was a mother or a wife to them or there was none, there were more sons or less of them, there were more daughters or less of them, no one ever asked any such question of them, no one asked what they did for their daily living, sometimes some of them would be gone a long time away from all of them, sometimes he would be rich then, sometimes he would come home then and be a hero to them, always there were uncertain things in any one of them to all of them and no one thought about them, no one knew them as uncertain things about any other one of them, no one ever asked any other one any question about them, mostly every one had it as right for him that each one of them should have a little house where his family was living, each family of them had a little house where any one of them and all of them did their eating and sleeping and washing, each one of them had his own way of earning a living, such uncertain things as each one of the families of them had in them are always there in all of them who are living then in the part of a city where no rich people are living, no one of them ever thinks about them, there is nothing for any of them except the things that happen every day to them, there is nothing for them except their daily living which is all there is then of them.

  All of them who lived near the ten acre place where the Herslands were living in that part of Gossols where no rich people were living all of them then were good enough people and regular enough in their daily living and mostly all of the families of them had lived a long enough time where they were living then. Mostly all of them were honest enough men and women, mostly among them there were not any bad men and women. Mostly they were honest enough working men and women and their children went to school and went on to be decent enough men and women to go on living as their families always had been living. As I have just been saying there were not very many of them that were not good enough men and women. A few of them came to a bad end before they got through with their living but mostly all of them were honest enough men and women and they had good enough children and mostly they all made enough by working to keep on and be honest enough in their daily living.

  As I was saying they were very different each one of them from the others of them, each family of them from all the other families of them. A great many of them had a little of an uncertain side to them, mostly in every family of them some of them had an uncertain something in them but perhaps the rest understood it about them, none of them ever spoke about them no one ever said it of them that they had uncertain things in them, perhaps it was all a natural way of being. Each one of them went on with his living and whatever came to any one of them was the natural way of living. It is queer in them in the families like them, the uncertain ways some of them seem to have always inside them. Perhaps it is all simple in them, mostly in all of these who lived around the Hersland family then, there was nothing that was wrong about them. Mostly they were all honest enough and good enough men and women with decent enough children.

  There were many families of them. There was one family of them that was a family of women then, there was a father to them and he was not dead then or living away from them but mostly then it was as far as one could know them a family of women, a mother and there were three daughters then Anna and Cora and Bertha. There was a father of them, there was a husband to the mother of them, he was regularly with them in his eating and sleeping then, one saw him but somehow he was not really existing, he went every day to his working but that never made him any more of a real being. He went every day to his working, he came home to his eating and sleeping, he was regular in his living, he was regular in his working, he was not very real in existing. Many men and sometimes there is a woman and sometimes there are children of them, have such a way in them, they have such an uncertain feeling coming out from them, they are not real in existing.

  The man then, the father of the three of them the husband of the woman then, was not existing for them, he used the little house with them for eating sleeping and washing, he went every day to his working. He was not existing for any of them, he was not existing for the Hersland family who were living in the ten acre place then near them neither for Mrs. Hersland and the three children then nor for the governesses and servants of them. With the father David Hersland, there was in him a little more of real existing, there was in him then that he was a man to feel it in him when another man spoke to him, when another man spoke as a master to him or as just a man to know him; there was then in him a feeling of being a male thing then when Mr. Hersland met him. There would be a greeting between them when this one met with him, when Mr. Hersland came home from his day in the part of Gossols where the richer people were living, when he met him walking, when he met him coming home carrying something he had just been buying, there was in the man the being that made him speak to another man when he met him, there was in him a being that made the meeting with another man give to him almost a real existence in him, there was in him just such a little being so that he could give to another man a greeting, could so get into him a real being from the meeting he had then with a man in giving him a greeting; there was in him, in such a kind of man and there are very many of them and they need men to give to them a feeling of existence in them, there was in this man just enough of a kind of being in him that always could make it certain that he was an object real in being, an object called man not woman the world around him then, and there are many of them and as far as any one can know such a one then that is all then that there is of him, perhaps there is more to him to the woman who is a wife to him or to his children who live in the house where he is living, perhaps there is a real existing to him but to all of those around him, to the Hersland family and the others who lived with them there was never in him any real existing, there was for all of them in the house where this man was living only a family of women, a mother and three daughters of them.

  There was nothing wrong about him, anybody could see in him that he was a man and there are many of them made just like him, there is nothing wrong inside them, there is nothing very strong of existence in them, there is nothing wrong inside them, it is only that there is not very much of existence in them, there is a little in them, they are men when other men are with them, they are men when they are alone then, only then it is not very strong inside them, they are men then, they are alone then, existence is not very strong in them then, there is just enough of such existence in them then that one can know them that they are men then when one thinks of them, one does not then when they are alone then ever think about them ever feel any existence in them.

  With other men around them, existence in them gets to be a little stronger inside them, they come almost to feel themselves to be inside in them, there gets to be almost enough inside them of existence to make them then have other men feel that they really do exist then, but mostly in them there is not enough of existence to them to make women and children feel that they are really men inside them, men and having real existence in them, it is only when other men meet with them that the existence gets to be strong enough in them so that any one can know them and they can feel it in them that they are men and one with all the men around them, when they are alone with women or with children they have never in them anything of such a feeling, they have then nothing of real being, they go every day to their working, they come home to their eating and their sleeping, there is nothing wrong inside them, there is only nothing in them of real existence to them, it takes other men arou
nd them, it needs other men inside them, it takes other men to greet them, it takes other men around them to make of them a real being to be inside them and so it was with this one and there are many made just like him, and so this family then, it was to almost all who knew them a family of women then, the mother and three daughters of them Anna and Cora and Bertha then.

  The mother's face was old now and a little wooden. She did dressmaking. She sometimes worked for the rich family near them, for Mrs. Hersland and her children. She was getting old now and a little wooden.

  She was a foreign woman. No one knew it about him the husband who lived in the house with them whether he was or was not a foreign man. She was a foreign woman and she was a little old now and her face was a little wooden. She was a hard-working woman, she did dress-making, she earned a good enough living, they were doing very well with their living all of them then. The mother was a foreign woman, she had it in her to be really existing. She was existing for all five of them the Hersland family who knew her then, she was existing for her children, she was existing for all of them who lived in the houses near them, for all the people who ever came to know them, she was not important to them but she had in her a character for them.

  The mother had existence in her in this she was different from the man who was a husband to her. She had existence in her, there was real existence to her, more than just enough to know she was a woman creature, she had existence in her, she had a character to her but she had nothing that was important in her, she was not important to any one around her she was not important to the three daughters who were then with her, in a way she was not important to the man who was a husband to her.

  There was no past or present in her, there was existence in her, there was a character to her but there was nothing important inside her, there was nothing past or present or in the future that would be connected to her, but she had existence enough to make of her a really existent thing inside her, existence was strong in her in every moment in her, strong enough to make it to be real inside her, she did not need others around her to make existence inside her.

  There was nothing connected in her with a past or present or future, there was existence in her, there was a character to her, she had no importance then to any one around her, she had the existence of the useful things around her, it was active in her this existence inside her, it was active in her and this gave a character to her, it was active in her and this was real existence inside her, this made every one who knew her know there was real existence to her, she had real existence in her but she had no importance inside her, there was nothing in her to connect her to a past a present or a future, there was real existence to her, she did not need others around her to make for her the existence she had inside her, they did not make it any stronger others who were around her the existence she had inside her, that was real in her, that was the character in her, that was all that there was of her, there was not in her anything to connect her with the past or present or future, there was real existence to her, that was the whole of her, she had no importance in her to any one of all who knew her.

  As I was saying of her she was getting older now and her face and the body of her gave a wooden look to her.

  There was nothing in her to connect her with the past the present or the future, there was not any history of her. They were three daughters to her and they then lived altogether, the mother the man who was a husband to her and the three girls Anna, Cora and Bertha. The only thing that could ever give to any one who knew her the mother of the three of them Anna, Cora and Bertha, the only thing that could ever give to any one who knew her a history of her was as they would see it in the history of each one of the three girls who had been once inside her, not of her then, though they were then inside her. The history of each one of them would never make a history for her, the three of them and each one of them made it that one could know about her the history of her. The history they each one of them went through before her as they went through their living and they were the daughters of her, was the history of her who had once had them inside her, once she must have gone through the changes that each one of them went through as they lived longer, there was no history in her, they never made any history for her, the history of them as they went on in their changing around her, each girl repeating in her in the changes that went on in each one inside in her was the repeating around her what once had been changes in her, they were not for her the history of her, they were not for her any past or present or future, there was not in her anything of history inside her, there was not in her any importance to her, there was not in her anything to hold her together with the three girls around her who went through their changes in front of her the three girls who once had been inside her, there was not in her any history of her, there was not in her any importance to her, there was in her real existence inside her, there was in her a character of her and that was all that was then her, that was all then that was ever in her, there was never any history in her, there was a history of her and that the three girls were living around her, they were having the changes she had had in her and now she was getting older and her face and body was getting to be wooden all through her and existence was always just the same in her, it was all there was of her.

  The three girls Anna and Cora and Bertha went through the changes then and they were living then altogether, they went through their changes, the changes she had had in her, first they were in Anna then in Cora and then in Bertha and they were never to the mother a history of her, they were never to her a history inside her, there was never in her any connection inside her with a past or present or a future, these changes in the girls with her were like all the objects around her, like the making of dresses to her, like the changing of the eating from the green stuff they brought to her, through the cooking that was natural for her to the eating that came after, this was all to her like the changes in Anna and Cora and Bertha, they never made a history for her, they were not to her a history of her, they were the changes around her, and first it was in Anna then in Cora then in Bertha, each one of them had been once inside her, that was not a history to her, they were changing then around her, that, was not history of her in her, she was getting older now and looking wooden, that did not change in her the existence inside her, that was a change like all the others in her, that was not any more of a history to her, existence was always just the same inside her and it would always be so in her until she died and that would be one more change of her, it would not be a change to her and so it was now with the girls around her, they went through their changes before her, they were not a history to her they were not for her a history of her, they were three daughters with her, they went through their changes one after another, they lived there in the small house all together she and the man who was a husband to her and the three girls who each one once had been inside her, and that was not a history to her, that was like all the other changes in her, that was like eating and dressmaking for her and so she had existence in her and she always worked hard and had a character in her and she never had importance for any one around her. She had existence in her like the useful things around her, she had character, she had had changes in her and now she was getting older and there was a little more wooden change inside her and so there would be changes in her until she would be all through with all the changes she had in her and always there would be real existence to her and always there would be character to her always there would never be a past or present or a future connected with her, always there would be existence in her, there would be changes, there would never be any history of her to her.

  The eldest daughter of them Anna had come then to be a rather beautiful woman. No one thought it about them that all three of them would have that as a change in them. No one thought it about her the mother of them that she had had once a change in her like this change in them before she had borne any one of them. The eldest one had beauty then, now when she was grown to be a woman, all three of them one after the
other came to have in them as one of the changes that went through them, beauty in them when they were not any longer children. Not one of the three of them had any signs in them of such a thing going to happen to them until it had happened in them. The one of them, to any one who began at any time to know them, the one of them who had come to be a woman then and to have this change into beauty which happened to each one of them, had it that this had already happened to her then, to any one who came then to know them it was a fact then that this one was a beautiful woman but this never made any connection for them to the other or other ones who had not had the change in them, the beauty in the one that had it then was like existence in the mother of them, it was in them one after the other of them as if it had always been in them, it had no connection in them with a past or future in them, it had no connection in them to any other changes that had been or could come to them, it had no connection with the others of them who were then with or without beauty in them, it had no connection with the mother of them, with the change she once had which was like the change in each one of them but nothing made any connection between any of them, to the mother of them, nor to the father of them for he had not any real existence in him to any one of them.