The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress (81 page)

     As I was saying Martha then was once a very little one a baby, and then a little one and then a young girl and then a woman and then she was older and then later there was an ending to her and always all through this living in her she was the same whole one inside her and to every one who knew her.
     In the description of her that I have been writing so far Martha has been a very little one, a baby, and then a little one and then a young girl and then about to become a young woman and always then in a way to herself inside her and to every one knowing her she had been the same whole one.
     This was then as I was saying in a way always true she was always the same whole one inside her and to every one ever knowing her.
     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 getting older, in some when they are old ones. Martha was mostly always to every one who knew her the same whole one, when she was a very little one, a little one, an older one, a very old one, mostly always she was to every one about the same kind of a whole one.
     And this in a way always was true of her, all her living she was the same whole one, there was very little change in her, mostly all her living the whole of her was repeating completely, when she was learning, when she was loving, when in her later living she was still struggling. She was then all her living the same whole one, there was the same concentration of being in her, the same the proportion of one thing to the other things active in her.
     As I was saying this was in the main true of her, she was of the kind of men and women and there are always many many millions of them and they are of every kind in a way of men and women, that is of independent dependent or dependent independent kind of them who are all their living the same whole one who always are repeating the complete whole thing they always are in themselves and to every one, who have the same concentration of the being in them always all their living when they are babies, when they are young ones, when they are older ones, when they are old ones, who have the same proportion of one thing to the other things active in them every minute in their living.
     As I was saying Martha Hersland was of this kind of them though there were moments in her living when it seemed a little different in her for sometimes she really got into motion and mostly as I was saying motion was just confusion in her, it never came to movement in her it just was mixing up of being inside her.
     As I was saying she was of the independent dependent kind of being those having in them attacking as their natural way of winning fighting, as their natural way of winning in loving, and as I was saying mostly in her, commotion in her did not make an actual attack by her for her and this was not there really to herself inside her, to herself there was real movement in her, but to every one then there was only stupid resisting and nervous being in her and this was mostly the whole history of her.
     As I was saying this was not quite the whole history of her, it did come to happen in her, sometimes in the living, in the history of her, that the shock of commotion in her was so strong as to give a forward movement to her. As I was saying that happened once to her when she was a very little one when she threw down the umbrella, it happened every now and then in her, it happened, as I was saying, when she saw the man hitting the woman in the street with his umbrella to rid himself then of her and of the asking in her. When she saw this it was not a horror she had in her, really she had not any very certain feeling in her, mostly in her living, as I was saying, she had not any very certain feeling, mostly as I was saying it was confusion, excitement and nervousness she had in her when there was movement inside her, then as I was saying, when she saw the man hit the woman with an umbrella and she was just then passing, she had not then as I was saying any distinct feeling then in her about what she had been seeing, not then and not then later, but it gave a motion to her, it gave her direction to getting for herself a university education.
     This then that I have been describing is the being in Martha and now there will be more history of her.
     As I was just saying that which I have been describing is the being in Martha Hersland. I have been describing the living and the feeling she had in her until now she was almost a young woman and a new life was to begin for her.
     As I was saying she started then her preparation to get for herself a college education. As I was saying no one was objecting. Her father Mr. Hersland was not very much interested just then in his children. She had teachers and she could be taught enough by them to pass her entrance examination. She began a little then to know other kinds of young girls and boys than those that she had until then been knowing. She played duets in the evening and sang with John Davidson who was preparing to go away to get an eastern education. She was less and less and then almost not at all with them the people living near the Hersland family then, and then as I was saying she went to get her college education. This is now to be more history of her and how she came to have a lover and how he came to marry her and how he came then to leave her and what happened then to him and what happened then to her. In short this is now to be a history of all the living there ever was in her, all the being in her.
     As I was saying there was not then very much change in the being in her, she was always then the same whole one, at first there was a little more movement in her, she learned a little at first how to have definite feeling in her, she learned that in the college life around her but it was not really the being in her and all this will come out in the history of her. This is now then more history of her. Now then there will begin to be a little history of another, of one of those who came to know her, who came to the same college where she was learning to do the things I have just been describing. This is now the beginning of the history of him as I am saying. This is now a little description of the living there had been in Phillip Redfern.
     There was then in the living of Martha Hersland the being born in the hotel where the Hersland family was living when Mr. David Hersland came to Gossols to make for himself a great fortune and brought with him his wife little Fanny Hissen who was to know there the Shilling family who where to make in her the beginning of the feeling of herself inside her. There was then in the living of Martha Hersland that her father Mr. David Hersland and her mother Fanny Hersland came together to make her and she was born in the hotel where Mr. and Mrs. Hersland were living when they first came to Gossols where Mr. Hersland was to make for himself a great fortune and where Mrs. Hersland was to have mostly a living that was not the way of living that it would have been natural for her to be having. Martha was born then in the hotel and Mr. Hersland was just beginning then to succeed in winning fighting and Mrs. Hersland was beginning then through knowing the Shilling family, Sophie Shilling, Pauline Shilling and the mother of them to have a little in her to herself inside the feeling of herself to herself in her that it was not really natural for her to have ever really in her. Then in the living of Martha Hersland she was a little one in the ten acre place where the Hersland family lived a little later and there it was that Mr. Hersland was winning fighting and then having impatient feeling in him and then being full up with impatient feeling and then having in him beginning failing in winning and then having in him only beginning and there Mrs. Hersland had always more and more in her from the for her queer poor people near her and the servants and governesses in the house with her the feeling of importance of herself to herself inside her and then she had there in her the beginning of the weakening in her the being lost among her children and her husband living in the house with her. In the living of Martha Hersland she was a little one in the ten acre place and she was then living there the half-city half-country living of the people around her and she went to school then and she was healthy enough then and happy enough then and she was always then getting older and getting bigger and she had some troubles then and always she was of them the people in the small houses near the ten acre place where she was living then and she had always the living in her and the being in her I was describing and sometimes she got a little fatter and sometimes a little thinner and sometimes she was happy enough and often she was not so happy and mostly always she was healthy and sometimes she had uneasy feelings in her and often her father was a trouble to her and often the governess was troublesome to her and mostly her mother was not very important for her and she went on and the family living of the Hersland family was changing some as I was saying and a little Martha was changing in her as the family living was changing around her and when it came to her to want her own education no one was paying much attention to her, each one of the Hersland family had then themselves inside them to themselves each one, the father as I was saying and the mother as I was saying and Alfred Hersland and his brother David as I will be saying in the history of the two of them. Always a little then Martha had trouble with each one of them, the family living in the house together, her father and her mother and her brother Alfred and David the younger brother but mostly then they none of them were really important to her, she was all taken up then with the being in her, mostly each one of them then the family living together were taken up then by themselves then each one by the being in them and that was the history of the Hersland family, then when Martha went to college for more education. This was then the living of the Hersland family when Martha was having it in her that she was a young woman, this was the history of all of them then, that they were each one of them taken up with the being inside of them then, the father Mr. Hersland with much impatient feeling then in him, the mother with important being in her from the governess Madeleine Wyman who came often to see her and from having weakening commencing then in her, Martha from the having seen the man hit the woman with the umbrella and so then having in her the need of a college education for her, the brother Alfred who was then beginning to do things that were full of interesting feeling for him, the younger brother David who was beginning then and always from then it went on in him to find the meaning for him of something in each day of living that would make living have meaning for him, each one of them then the Hersland family then were each one of them all taken up with themselves inside them and this was the history of them as I was saying when Martha went away from them to get a college education. Each one of the Hersland family was then each one of them too much taken up with the being inside themselves then to pay much attention to another one. Martha went away to college then, as I was saying, and there she was learning to be like them the young men and women of her generation and there as I was saying she came to know Phillip Redfern.
     Phillip Redfern was born in a small city and in the south western part of this country. He was the son of a consciously ill-assorted pair of parents and his earliest intellectual concept so in his later living he was always saying as I will soon be telling, was the realisation of the quality of these two decisive and unharmonised elements in his child life. He remembered too very well his first definite realisation of the quality of women when the inherent contradictions in the claims made for that sex awoke in him much confused thought. He often said that he had often puzzled over the fact that he must give up his chair to and be careful of little girls while at the same time he was taught that the little girl was quite as strong as he and quite as able to use liberty and to perfect action. In his later living he said that when he was a very little one this had been so much a puzzle to him, little girls then, to him, had everything, he wished then when he was a little one and this was a puzzle to him, he wished he had been a little girl so and so have everything.
     His mother was his dear dear friend then and from her he received then all the thoughts and convictions that were definite and conscious then and for a long time after in him. She was an eager, impetuous, sensitive creature, full of ideal enthusiasms in her being, with moments of clear purpose and vigorous thinking but for the most part was excitably prejudiced and inconsequent in sensitive enthusiasm and given to accepting and giving and living sensations and impressions under the conviction that she had them as carefully thought out theories and principles that were complete from reasoning. Her constant rebellion against the pressure of her husband's steady domination found effective expression in the inspiring training of her son to be the champion of women. It would be a sublime proof of the justice of all the poetry of living so she was always thinking for the son of James Redfern to devote the strength of the father that was soon to be in the son of him to the winning of liberty, equality, opportunity, beauty, feeling, for all women.
     James Redfern was a man determined to be master always in his house. He was a man courteous and deferential to all women, he never came into any vivid relation with any human being. He was cold and reserved and had a strong calm attacking will in him, and he was always perfectly right in doing everything. This was always true of him. He never knew it in him that his wife had a set purpose in her to make their son any particular thing in living. Such a thing could never be a real thing to him, such a thing no woman he could have living in the house with him could have in her, to him. It could have no meaning such a fantastic notion and then too she never said it to him. It would not have any meaning excepting as words if she had ever said it to him. The things that have no meaning as existing are to every one very many, and that is always more and more important in understanding the being in men and women. Often it is very astonishing, it is like seeing something and some one who always has been walking with you and you always have been feeling that one was seeing everything with you and you feel then that they are seeing that thing the way you are seeing it then and you go sometime with that one to a doctor to have that one have their eyes examined and then you find that things you are seeing they cannot see and never have been seeing and it is very astonishing and everything is different and you know then that you are seeing, you are writing completely only for one and that is yourself then and to every other one it is a different thing and then you remember every one has said that sometime and you know it then and it is astonishing. You know it then yes but you do not really know it as a continuous knowing in you for then in living always you are feeling that some one else is understanding, feeling seeing something the way you are feeling, seeing, understanding that thing, and always it is a shock to you sometime with every one you are ever knowing and many never really know it of any one that they are feeling, seeing, understanding a different way from them and this is very very common. As I was saying it never would come to Mr. James Redfern to be realising that Mrs. Redfern had a destiny for their son such as being a champion of women. Such a thing would be a fantastic dream that could come from sickness in some one and nothing more to him and as I was saying she never said it to him. Mr. Redfern was very willing that Mrs. Redfern should be the tender dear friend of their son, he was too simply certain of the being in himself and in his son to pay much attention to the emotional influences that Mrs. Redfern brought to bear on him then when he was a young one. He was simply certain, that was the being in him, that his son would be a rational man. Emotional women and romantic children had pleasant fantastic dreams that were alright for them. He demanded from his son then obedience and in his presence self-restraint and for the rest when Phillip was a man being his father's son would make him the man all the Redferns had been.