The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress (12 page)

     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 of 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.
     Even his dead wife with her trickling crying that had been to her almost an important feeling of herself inside her, even she had been apart from him, and his children when they were no longer shut up with him were apart from him. All and everything was apart from him, and so he died, and with him died his important feeling, for even in his dying he had no power in him for any one not shut up with him. He was all of power for him for he was for himself all there was of religion. And that was all and he never had had any power in him for anything not shut up with him. And so he died away and left them and his important feeling died inside him.
     All of his children had each mixed up in them the father, important to himself in his religion, and the mother, with her almost important feeling, with her constant trickling crying that made her have inside her her almost important feeling. She with the way it came from within her this almost important feeling that she had inside her, could have a power with all who knew her. She was not like her husband with his important feeling giving power only with them like his little children who were shut up with him.
     The children had many ways of having the father and the mother mixed up to make them. One of them, as I was saying, the eldest of them, was stubborn and gloomy and hard in her religion and it gave her a power with her children but it was not so perfect to give her her own important feeling as religion had been to her father to give him the important feeling that was all him. In her own being she was not all there was of religion, she as a woman had hard ways that gave her power, not from her religion but from her power as a woman, as any one can have it by using the hard ways everybody has inside them, and so she was less in religion, she had no toleration, she was hard stubborn and gloomy in religion, and always she made it stronger by her power as a woman, and so she had not the greatness in her that her father had who made her, and she had not the almost greatness in her that the mother had arising inside her with the dreary trickling crying that was all her.
     And so in each one the father and the mother were variously mixed up in them. Some of them had it in them as an almost important feeling like Fanny Hissen who with this way of having it as a beginning, the almost important feeling that the mother had with her dreary trickling had it brought to a real beginning of a really important feeling, by the knowing old fat Mrs. Shilling and her daughter Sophie Shilling and her other daughter Pauline Shilling, and then in her later living cut off from a lively sense of being part of being which was for her the natural way of living she got it more and more then from her servants and governesses and seamstresses and dependents and the for her poor queer kind of people that she had around her in this later living in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living, she got it from her power with them, being as she was with them of them, and from her position and her dignity of Hissen living always above them. From those ways that her later living in that part of Gossols away from where the other rich people were living gave to her, in this later living there came to her a kind of importance of herself inside her that was nearly an individual kind of feeling and this was what gave to her family later when she came to pay visits to them out of the far west to them, gave them a sense as if she were almost a princess for them, out of from them, belonging to them, having a different feeling of herself inside her from any other ones of them. Not that this was, in her, in any sense the complete thing of being important to herself inside her, it was only more marked in her than any other of them had found it from the natural way of living it had come to all the rest of them to be leading.
     It was not different in her from the rest of them in one important thing. It was mixed up in her with the stubborn feeling that the not having the complete important feeling that the father had from being all there was of religion gave to all of them who had a little of him in them.
     All of them, as they had more or less of him in them, had it as a stubborn feeling, for none of them had it as a complete thing as he had had it inside him, and with the eldest of them, as I was saying, she who had most of the religion, with her it was a hard gloomy stubborn feeling and so this eldest one who had as much important feeling as the Fanny who had lived away from them and then had had in her come this for them important thing, this eldest of them although she was a power to all the rest of them by reason of the important feeling they knew inside her for them, was never a princess to them, she had not the gentleness and generous dignity that won them as their other sister had for them she who had had made to her the important feeling of herself inside her by the being away from all of them, away from the natural way of living for them.
     Then there were others of them who had all the sweetness in them that had turned to dreary trickling in the mother who had born all them, and one of those who had this sweetness in her dignity and gentleness and generous ways and so was a power to them was the one that the father lived with after his dreary wife had died away and left them.
     With these who had sweetness in them, with those who had changed into sweetness the dreary trickling of the mother that had born them, many of them, strongest in them after the sweetness and gentle dignity that made them, had it as the strongest thing inside them to be hurt not angry when any bad thing happened to them, they would be hurt then and their mouths would be drooping. And always all of these, the sweetest of them, had in them some of the stubbornness that not being the complete thing as their father had been was sure to put into them.