The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress (25 page)

     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. Sometimes 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.
     In their younger living, it was not very hard on them, their father's way of always beginning, they liked it too, the beginning, and the ending too, that was not so bad then for them, the impatient feeling in him was not then irritable inside him.
     They had some troubles with him then in their early living, sometimes in ways of doctoring, sometimes when he thought it was good for all of them to have castor oil given to them, sometimes when he thought a Chinese doctor would be good for them, sometimes when he had a queer blind man to examine some one of them; but all this, and the ways of eating, ways of cooking, he thought good for them, will come out in the history of each one of the three of them, for in each one of them it had a different effect on them in their later living, these new beginnings in all their younger living, beginnings and new ways in doctoring and in ways of eating.
     Sometimes in little things it would be annoying to them in their early living, his way of beginning and then never knowing that he was full up with impatient feeling and so had stopped and wanted others to keep on going. Sometimes this would be annoying of an evening. He would want to play cards and the three of them would begin with him, to please him. The children felt it to be hard on them when they would have begun playing cards just to oblige him and after a few minutes with them he would have arise in him his impatient feeling, and he would say, “here you just finish it up I haven't time to go on playing, “and he would call the governess to take his hand from him and all three of the children would have then to play together a game none of them would have thought of beginning, and they had to keep on going for often he would stop in his walking to find which one was winning, and it never came to him to know that he had made the beginning and that the children were playing just because they had to, for him. It was a small thing but it happened very often to them and it was annoying for them.
     In their younger living life was pleasant enough for all of them in the ten acre place, though they had a governess and that was not always pleasant to them, their father was not always pleasant for them, their mother mostly was not very important to them. It was true of all three of them then that they were more entirely of them, the poorer people who lived around them, than they were of their mother then, than their mother was of them then, though they were all there was of their mother's daily living then.
     Later in their living their father was angry when he saw it in them that they were not comfortable with the people who were always in a right rich living, when they came in contact with them. This feeling the mother never had about them. To her she was always of that right rich being, she never felt it in her that she was cut off from the way of being that was the natural way of being for her, she felt the sense of being important inside her, she never knew that that was different in her than it had been when she was of the old way of living that was natural to her. It never came to her to know it inside her that she had in her a feeling of herself in her that never had been in her and never would be in most of her own family who had gone on with the natural way of living for them. She did not know she had had an important feeling of herself inside her arise in her from being cut off from the natural way of living for her, from knowing the Shilling family and then from having later around her only, for her, poor queer kind of people, and governesses and servants and seamstresses and dependents there in the house with her.
     She never really knew it in her that she was not really important to the man who was a husband to her. She never really knew it in her that she was not important to the children who had been once in her. In her later life when she was weak and breaking down inside her she felt it a little dimly in her, now she did not have any such feeling, she had a feeling of herself inside her, she had around her a governess and servants and a seamstress and dependents, she had her husband and her three children. She never knew it in her husband that she was always less and less important to him, she never knew it then that her children were then coming to be more entirely of them, the poorer people who lived in the small houses near them, than they were of their mother then, than their mother was of them then, though to her feeling then they were almost all there was then of her daily living. She never knew it that to the feeling in her of herself inside her her husband and her children were not important to her, they were of her as if they were in her a part of her, they were not important to her in the feeling of herself inside her that had come now to begin to be really in her.
     Real country living feeling all three of the Hersland children in their younger living had inside them, a real country living feeling. This they had in them in the ten acre place with the hired men working and the chickens and ducks and fruit-trees and haymaking and seed-sewing and cows and some vegetable gardening. It was to them in their feeling real country living, it was to them earning a living in the hard country way and it was so that they then felt it inside them.
     The three children had in many ways then in them the feeling of real country living. Their mother never had this feeling, with her it was always country house city living. In the children it was sometimes a real country living feeling that they had in them, and they were then very really a part of the life around them, of country ways of making a living, of cows and chickens and fruit-trees and hunting, and it was for them then in their younger living not country house city living, it was for them then real country living and country feeling and village life around them and hard-working country ways of earning a living.
     The people in the small houses near them had all of them a half and half feeling, a half country and a half city feeling in them.
     The three Hersland children had in them a country house city feeling only in their mother's feeling and with the governess and servants and dependents living there in the house with them. As it was true then of all three of them that they were more then of the poorer people around them than they were of their mother's living then, so it was true of the three of them that they had more in them the country feeling of the people around them than they had of the half city feeling that these people had in them. All of the Hersland children had a little too of the half city feeling that the people around them had in them. The country feeling and the city feeling the Hersland children had in them in their being part of the life around them was different than any feeling their mother and the servants and governesses and dependents living in the house with them ever had in any of them. Their father had a feeling more like that in them then, with him it was from his being as big as all the world around him, everything was in him, he had all of it somehow someway a little in him, city feeling, country feeling, and city country house feeling, inside him.
     With the people living in the small houses near them Mr. Hersland mostly had in him city country house living, he was important to all of them, the only rich man in that part of Gossols where they were living. He was important to them then, the rich man, and they did not then know him any more than as his children then knew him. He was a pleasant enough useful enough man for them to have living in the big place near them. The queer ways in him never made them think much about him. They knew then more of the daily living of Mrs. Hersland and the children. The men in most of the little houses near the ten acre place mostly, like Mr. Hersland, only came to their houses for eating, for sleeping and for Sunday resting. He did the same, only he was a rich man, a pleasant man enough to them, a useful man enough when they would have any need of him. They never thought much about the queer ways he sometimes had in him, they never had then for him anything in the way of a personal feeling.
     He was then for them a city country house person. He had it in him to feel other things inside him, sometimes to feel in him a real country living feeling, sometimes he brushed it all away from him, the country feeling, the city country house feeling living, he was then inside him a city man with city schemes and troubles and men around him, and then he walked up and down and his impatient feeling was irritable inside him and he would be muttering and talking to himself and jingling the money in his pockets then and more and more it came to be true of him that he walked up and down thinking, to himself inside him working, scheming, brushing men away from around him, domineering over them, going another way not knowing inside him that he was leaving them because they were then too many for him.
     More and more then in their later living in the ten acre place in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living there was for him no reality to country living, to city country house living. There was to him then in his later living more reality in the people living then around him, but this will come out in the history of him as each of his children get to know it then about him.
     For the children it was in the beginning really country living, for the mother it was always rich city country house living. For the people around them in Mrs. Hersland then it was rich city country house living, in Mr. Hersland city being, in the three Hersland children each one a mixed thing in them of the three ways of feeling, rich city country house being country being and city being, and the mixtures of these three feelings in each one of the three of them to the people in the small houses near them is part of the history of each one of the three of them.