THE MAKING OF AMERICANS (Family Saga). Gertrude Stein
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.
In some of them the mixing of the trickling and the stubbornness inside them came to make an angry feeling that came in flashes from them, in some of them it came to make a suspicious feeling inside them that made it hard for them to trust in women or in men, and always, as I was saying, the father and the dreary mother were very variously mixed up in each one of them.
As I was saying, one of them who even more than Fanny Hissen had the almost important feeling that the mother had inside her with her constant trickling crying that was always rising in her, this one came to have it even more in her, came to have it almost really in her by an individual kind of thinking that arose of itself inside her. She had the gentle tenderness in her that made constant dreary trickling in her mother, and it came all from inside her, and she had no stubborn ways in her, she was pure as the sweetest ones of those around her those who had turned to sweetness the dreariness of their mother, and she had not stubbornness inside her, she had only from her father the thinking that had made him for himself to be all there was of power. And this one of the Hissen women came very near to winning, came very near to seeing, came very nearly making of herself to herself a really individual being. She was a little not strong enough in keeping going, and so with her it came only to being a very nearly really important feeling of herself to herself inside her. And she was the nearest any of them ever came to winning.
There were very many of them and each one, of course, had his or her own individual way of feeling, thinking, and of doing, and with all of them the father and the mother were variously mixed up in them, and with some of them it was more the father and it made sometimes a stubborn feeling to be the most important thing inside them after the family that made all them and sometimes this the stubborn feeling met in them with the other things they had within them and sometimes then it was a sharp bright angry feeling that was strongest in them after the family way that had made all them, and these then would have a stubborn or an angry feeling when anything happened to any one of them.