THE MAKING OF AMERICANS (Family Saga). Gertrude Stein

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СКАЧАТЬ some lived and were prosperous and had children. One as I was saying died a glutton and spoiling him was the one weak thing the strong mother did to harm any of them.

      The old man never made much of a fortune but with the help his children gave him he lived very well and when he died he left his wife a nice little fortune. She lived long and was strong to the last and firmly supporting and her back was straight and firm and always she was like a great mountain, and always she was directing and leading all whom she found needing directing.

      She was then very old, and always well, and always working, and then she had a stroke, and then another, and then she died and that was the end of that generation.

      There had been born to Martha and David Hersland many sons and daughters. All who lived to be grown up had gotten married and almost all of these were prosperous. One, the glutton, died and left his wife and children to his brothers, he had not made enough money to leave them provided, and his brothers each one in their turn gave the money to support them.

      Of the daughters two of them were well married. The third one always lived with her husband but it was her brothers who kept her dressed and gave her children education and then later in their life started them out in their working.

      On the whole it was a substantial progress the family had made in wealth, in opportunity, in education, in following out the mother's leading to come to the new world to find for themselves each one a sufficient fortune.

      In all of them the father and the mother were variously mixed to make them, but mostly it was the mother who was strongest in them. Some, like the glutton, had in certain ways the important feeling in them that the father had had in religion. Some, like the daughter who had not made much of a success in marrying, had his way of not being very good at keeping on even after they had made the beginning, but mostly all of them had the strength and solid power in them that the mother had it in her to give to all of them. Most of them began and kept on well after they had made a beginning. And so they were mostly very successful in the business of living.

      In every one of them the father and mother were very variously mixed up in them. The fourth son, David Hersland, one of the fathers we must soon be realising so that we can understand our own being, was the only one of all of them who had gone to the far west to make his fortune. It is a little hard to see just how the mixture of this father and this mother came to make him. He was in some ways, as I was saying, a very splendid kind of person. He was big and abundant and full of new ways of thinking, and this was all his mother in him, but he had not her patient steadfast working. He was irritable and impatient and uncertain and not always very strong at keeping going, though always he was abundant and forceful and joyous and determined and always powerful in starting. And then too he was in his way important inside to him as his father had been when he felt his religion in him. But all this will show more and more in him as I tell you slowly the history of him.

      He had gone as a young man to Gossols to make his fortune. This was the new world in a new world and it took this newest part of this new world to content him. He alone of all the brothers had this restless feeling in him. All the others did very well where the mother had brought them. He alone had needed to go farther to find for himself his life and a sufficient fortune.

      As I was saying he had brought his wife to Gossols with him. He had married her in Bridgepoint where one of his sisters had settled with her man who made there a very good living. At this time David though he was quite a young man had already made enough money to support him and a wife and children. This he had done before he had thought to go to Gossols where he was to make his great fortune. And so it was right for his sister at this time to be anxious to arrange a marriage for him. Now the idea of going to the far west was just beginning to work in him. Perhaps marrying might keep him with them, anyway it would be good for him to have a good wife to go to Gossols with him, and so he met little Fanny Hissen. It was arranged by his sister that this young woman should be married to him.

      Fanny Hersland all her life was a sweet gentle little woman. Not that she did not have a fierce little temper sometimes in her and one that could be very stubborn, but mostly she was a sweet little gentle mother woman and only would be hurt, not angry, when any bad thing happened to them.

      Her mother was one of those four good foreign women the grandmothers, always old women or as little children to us the generation of grandchildren. These four good foreign women, the grandmothers we need only to be just remembering, had each one a different kind of a foreign man to be a master to them. These four foreign women, the one strong to bear many children and then always after strong to lead them, the steady good one who was patient to bear her many children and then always was patient to suffer with them, the sweet pure one who died as soon as she had born all of them for that was all she knew then to do for them, and the little gentle weeping hopeless one who sorrowed in her having them and always after sorrowed in them, all these four foreign women had very many and very different kinds of children.

      The gentle little hopeless one who wept out all the sorrow for her children had many and very little children. She was the mother of the pretty gentle little woman that David Hersland married in Bridgepoint and took out to Gossols with him.

      The little weary weeping mother of all these gentle cheery little children had a foreign husband who was not very pleasant to his children. He too was little like his wife and like all his children but there was a great deal in him to cause terror to his wife and children. He was like old David Hersland important in religion. It was very deep inside him and with him it was much harder on his children. His wife too had sorrow in religion, she had sorrow from his being so important in religion and she had sorrow too from her own self in her own religion. But then it was all sorrow and sadness, and always a trickling kind of weeping that she had every moment in her living, and it really was not much worse in religion. It was just a way she had, this trickling weeping, even as when it sometimes did happen she was laughing. She never ever really stopped her sad trickling, to her joy was as it has been said of laughing, it is madness, and of mirth who doeth it, for even in laughter the heart is sorrowful and the end of that mirth is heaviness. It was in her as it was said by the quaker woman. I often think if I could be so fixed as never to laugh or to smile I should be one step better, it fills me with sorrow when I see people so full of laugh.

      It was a hard father and a dreary mother that gave the world so many and such pleasant little children. Mostly they were cheerful little children. Perhaps it was that the mother had wept out all the sorrow for them. There was no weeping that she had left over to them. They were mostly all in their later living cheerful hopeful gentle little men and women. They lived without ambition or excitement but they were each in their little circle joyful in the present. They lived and died in mildness and contentment.

      It was one of these cheerful gentle little Hissen people that David Hersland married there in Bridgepoint and then took to Gossols with him. And now he with all the mixed up father and strong mother in him and this little gentle cheerful pretty little woman who yet had a fierce little temper that could be very stubborn were to come together and make a life together and to mix up well and then to have many different kinds of children through her.

      They had mixed up very well. They had made a good enough success with their living.

      They had had five children through her. Two of these had died as little children. Three of them had grown up and were now grown young men and women, and these three are of them who are to be always in this history of us young grown men and women to us, for it is only thus that we can ever feel them to be real inside in us, them who are of the same generation with us.

      The mother, little gentle Mrs. Hersland, was very loving in her feeling to all of her children, but they had been always all three, after they had stopped being very little children, too big for her ever to control them. She could not lead them nor could she know what they needed inside them. She could not help them, she could only be hurt not angry when any СКАЧАТЬ