THE MAKING OF AMERICANS (Family Saga). Gertrude Stein

      As I was saying men working with him in his business living mostly went their own way to an ending of the things they began with him. Mostly to all of them there was danger to them in his way of going on to an ending. There was for them too much of beginning in his way of ending. Those who followed with admiration in them were mostly men who had not enough in them of themselves inside them to begin a big thing with him, they were outside him they were outside his business living, they were full of admiration for him, they felt in them part of the big feeling of being as big as all the world around them when they were with him. These men were to him like the people in the small houses near him, in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living, except that they came closer to him, they were not important to him they were not inside him for him but they were a comfort to him, they liked to know he had been fighting, they liked to know he had been brushing people away from around him, they were always there for him, they were not inside him to him, they were not important to him to his feeling, but they made a kind of support around him when he was resting up from fighting, they made a kind of cushion for him to keep him from knowing when he was through with fighting that he had not been winning. They were beginning to be important to him at the beginning of the ending of his middle living, earlier in his living they were all to him as the people in the small houses near him, in his country house living, he was hearty for them, he was a good neighbor to any one, he was good to do things for any one of them who asked him to do things for them. Some of them in the beginning of the ending of his middle living were more and more important to him as padding, not to fill him but to keep him from knowing it in himself that he was not strong in winning that the nature in him would not carry him to the last end of fighting which is winning, that when he turned away in a blustering fashion he was not brushing people away from him. He never knew it inside him that he was not brushing people away from around him when he went away from them in another direction in a blustering fashion until his children in his later living when they were angry with him for his impatient feeling said it to him. These men then in the beginning of the ending of his middle living were beginning to be important to him, they were then a padding, to him not inside him but around him. These men, some of them then, came to be in him a little like a tender feeling then when his wife was no longer in him as a tender feeling, they knew it always of him that he had a big beginning in him—that this was in him even when he was full up with impatient feeling—when later he was shrunk away from the outside of him, they always knew him to be strong in fighting and this in him made a strong living feeling always inside them to know him. In the beginning of the ending of his middle living some of such men were a little important to him. As I was saying his children knew it sooner of him than the business men around him that he was full up with impatient feeling that the fighting in him would break down into impatient feeling, they knew it sooner about him than the business men around him that the anger in him would not carry him to any last act against them. His wife as I was saying knew it in her feeling sooner than the business men around him sooner than his children how far the nature in him would carry him, knew it sooner in her feeling how she could manage him, knew it in her feeling how in a way she was not important to him though this last never came to be a conscious feeling till at the ending of his middle living. The governess and servants in the house with him, as I was saying, liked him then in his middle living for his hearty laughing and the big ways he had of buying but they never felt in contact with him, his wife and his children were more real to all of them, this was true of all of them the servants and the governesses as they lived in the house with them, there was less of such a feeling in the governess Madeleine Wyman who was the governess they had with them in the beginning of the ending of Mr. Hersland's middle living, in the time when Mrs. Hersland had inside her the most important feeling of herself to herself in her feeling.

      Mr. David Hersland then in his home living had always new ideas about ways of eating, ways of doctoring, ways of educating children, sometimes in a stubborn way he would go on a long time with some one way of them but this was mostly well at the end of his middle living, when his wife was not any longer strong in him, when she was no longer a tender feeling in him, when she was not any longer important to him. His wife had sooner in her than any one that knew him a feeling of how far the nature in him would carry him. She knew this in her from living with him as a wife to him, from the simple repeating that a man has in him for the woman who is a wife to him. He never felt it in him as a judgment of him this feeling that made her know about him how far the nature in him would carry him, she was to him never a thing outside him excepting when she was a kind of joke to him, she was always to him inside him, she never had for him any importance for him in her being outside of him, in such a part of her being she was either a joke to him or she was not important to him or he brushed her away from around him. The men around him in his business living never made him feel in him how far the nature in him would carry him, to himself with them he was strong in fighting with them or against them or he was brushing them away from around him or they were not important to him. The governesses and servants and the for him poor people near him were never important to him excepting perhaps in his later living when he was shrunk away from the outside of him and he needed a woman inside to fill him and this was beginning a little in him in the beginning of the ending of his middle living, or else when there were some of them in him a little in his later living as a tender feeling as earlier his wife had been in him to him, or as they were in the beginning of the ending of his middle living important as a padding to him. So he never knew it in him how far the nature in him could carry him, how he could not come to the last end of fighting, he never knew it inside him that he was not brushing people away from around him when he went away from them in another direction in a blustering fashion until his children in his later living when they were angry with him for his impatient feeling said it to him. His children were for him not so completely outside him as business men around him, they were not in him as his wife was in him and as later some women and some men were in him, they were not of no importance to him inside him as some men and some women and the governesses and servants and people living near him were to him, they were outside him, they could get at him, in his later living when they were angry with him because of his being full up then with impatient feeling they told him what they thought of him, they made him feel it then inside him and this was all in the ending of his middle living.