THE MAKING OF AMERICANS (Family Saga). Gertrude Stein

there around them some living in a straggling kind of way near them, all of them were in some way part of the daily living of all of them the three children and the mother of them, all of them were more or less part of the real being of the children then, never really part of the real being of the mother of them; always her real being which was not her important feeling, always her real being as she felt herself existing was the daily living with the three children as if they were still inside her and not apart from her and the well to do city living which was all there was of right being to her feeling. From her children she never came to have real important feeling of herself inside her, this could come to her from the Shilling family, a little from her husband as she felt toward him a little power, mostly from the servants and governesses who lived in the house with her, a little from the poorer people who lived near her.

      There were many kinds of people then living around them. More and more the children came to know them, to be really a part of them to have the same being with them to have inside them the same half and half feeling, half country town feeling and half altogether a city feeling. Some of them were sometimes working for them, dress-making carpentering shoe-mending, odd jobs were done by some of them. These and the children of them were for the three Hersland children then nearly all there was of real being in them, Some of these came very close inside to them. For each one of the three of them Martha Alfred and David it was different ones among those who were around them who came close to them, with all of them there was changing and this will be a history of each one of them.

      The household the mother father the three children of them, the governess and servants with them, they were all, all of them together then. More and more then it was then slowly coming to be true of them that the children were more entirety of them, the poorer people who lived around them, than they were of their mother then; they were neither of the mother or of the feeling she had in herself then, nor of the way she felt herself then as being of the living that was all there was of right being to her. They were all three of them then more entirely of them, the poorer people who lived around them then than they were of their mother then, than their mother was of them, though they were all there was of their mother's daily living then.

      They were very many of them then the poorer people who were living around them, there were very many of them then and they were all of them in each one of them then different from all the others of them and this all three of the children knew very well inside them. They were a part of them, they were always together with them. The servants and the governess were to them as the mother was for them, the father gave a different feeling in them and this will be clearer for them as slowly the character in each one of them comes out from inside him.

      There were many people living in small houses around them. Some of them were families of women, some of them were made up of some good ones and some who were not good to earn a living, there were families where it was a little hard to understand how they were living, nobody did any working, nobody had money that belonged to them. In some of the families around them there was a father who was really not very existing, no one was certain that he was a husband of the woman and the father of the children who all earned the living, such a one would just come and eat and sleep in the house with them, with some there was no mother and one was not very certain from anything the father showed in him or that the children remembered about him that there had ever been one. In one family there was a mother and she was a hard working woman, there were children some at home, some away from them, some about whom nothing was very certain, the father was not very certain, he was not dead to them he was not very certain only not very certain in his existence for them and in all of such families no one ever asked about the things around them, and no one ever talked about the queer ways anybody else had in him. All that was existing for any of them were the things that happened to them.

      In several of the families around them the father or a son had mysterious things he was doing every day in his earning of his living then. Mostly there was nothing bad in any of them, one of them had an intelligence office where he was working, none of his family ever liked to talk about him, it is often so with the work men do to earn a living, there is nothing bad about them, there is nothing in the work that is wrong that gives a reason why they should not do it then to earn their living, they do it every day and earn a living then but somehow it is a feeling the family have about him that they never talk as if he were of them. Sometimes it is from the work he is doing, sometimes from the ways he has in him, mostly there is nothing wrong in him, there is nothing bad in his earning of a living, somehow it is not natural to his family to talk about him, to act as if he were a part of their daily living, he eats with them, he sleeps there with them, that is all that makes him then a part of them. Mostly in the little houses in the part of the town where no rich people are living the families many of them have such kind of mysteries in them. No one ever talks about them. No one is ever certain with them how many children there are of them, what some of them do to make a living, whether there is a father to them, whether there is a mother to them, how they all come to the money they have for their daily living.

      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.