The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress

by Stein, Gertrude

  Alfred Hersland had a kind of being in him that in some who have it in them makes of them very good ones, some not such very good ones. This is in a way true of every kind there is of being. Of the kind of one that Alfred Hersland was in his being they range from very good ones through to pretty bad ones but this is true of every kind there is of men and women. Alfred had it in him to have his being in him so that it was a little passionate in him, not very affectionate in him, not so as to be very good in him, not really ever very bad in him, sometimes as aspiration in him, more or less as ambitious in him, sometimes as virtuous and didactic in him. The kind of being he had in him was of a kind of being that in some having it in them makes of them devout in religion, makes of them mystic in religion, so as to let themselves be absorbed, all existing, some of them having this kind of being in them have religion in them but then it is like that in the grandfather of Alfred Hersland, Mr. Hissen. Some having this kind of being in them are meek enough in living and yet a little dominating in family living and are just enough in thinking and impersonal in feeling, and some of such of them need to have as a wife to them some one very vibratingly existing to give to them enough stimulation to make them keep really alive inside them. All these then are of the resisting, the dependent independent kind of them. Some of them have the being in them very murkily passionate inside and some of these then are trying to engulf every one near them to be lost inside them, to be swallowed by them and some of them are not interested in very many persons near them but some of them they need to have engulfed by them and so then Alfred Hersland was of the kind of them the resisting dependent independent kind of them, the kind that own those they need for loving. Many of such of them do not really in their living need any one for loving, in a way Mr. Hissen the old man important in religion, being inside him all there was of religion was such a one of this kind of them. Alfred Hersland then to my feeling has being in him as pieces only of being, he is himself inside him, he has being in him, he has really living in him, every one has real being to me in them but as I am saying very many to me now are pieces of being and yet they are themselves inside them, I know that of them, I know that in them, I know that in myself with them, and so then to me then just now then in my feeling, very much mostly every one is as pieces of living, pieces of being, to me then now to my feeling, pieces everywhere of something are existing and repeating, repeating of pieces of something and yet whole ones are inside them are repeating all around me as living, feeling, being, thinking, existing and in a way then not whole ones and not a part of anything because they are one each one all there is of them and so then just now to my feeling it is a little fragmentary all there is of living and keeping going is only in everything because it is not ended yet and that is then my feeling just now inside me and Alfred Hersland is to me a real being but not having completion in the sense of a whole meaning, everything then every one, that is mostly every one mostly everything is just now to my feeling as pieces of being, pieces alive completely inside them and so always repeating as a whole one but having not meaning as a whole one. Alfred Hersland then was a kind of them he had a kind of being in him that was in him as more or less engulfing, somewhat passionate, not very bad, certainly not very good, engulfing resisting dependent independent being, needing to own those he would need for loving, very often needing some one poignantly alive to influence him.

  Of the kind of one that Alfred Hersland was in his being they range from very good ones through to pretty bad ones, from very tyrannical ones to very just ones, from very good ones through to pretty bad ones, from very religious ones to completely skeptical ones, from very dominant ones to very meek ones, from very passionate ones to completely indifferent ones and all of these in their living are of the resisting kind of them the dependent independent kind of them, those of them should have then needing to own those they need for loving. Alfred Hersland then had in him to be a little passionate and engulfing, a little meek and a little tyrannical in living, a little didactic and superior in aspiring, and certainly not really a very good one and in religion mostly not believing and yet not being really completely certain that to be dead was to be really completely a dead one, he had it a little in him to be a little going to be saving himself by a little religion in himself or in somebody very near to him whom in a way then he was owning.

  Of the kind of one that Alfred Hersland was in his being, the kind of them men and women having in them such kind of being range from very good ones through to pretty bad ones, have all kinds of mixtures in them, have every kind of way of living are many of them pretty successful in living, some very successful and some pretty miserably failing, some pretty steady with the being in them, some pretty intermittent and some meek and some very weak in being and all this is true of every kind there is of men and women.

  I am thinking now of six of them that have such a kind of nature in them like that in Alfred Hersland and these have it very differently in them than he had it in him and then there was his grandfather Mr. Hissen of whom I have written. There was one and he was not very successful not very not successful in living, he was successful enough in living and he had it in him to be impersonal and just and kindly enough with mostly every one, and he had not any engulfing passionate nature in him, not at all any such a kind of this kind of being in him, and he was almost altogether certain that to be dead was to be really a dead one and he did not altogether completely like it such a feeling and he could be a little not certain of it inside him though mostly altogether he was certain that to be dead is to be really truly a dead one and he liked it very well that his wife who could be making lively living feeling was very certain that to be dead was not at all to be a dead one and he liked it then that she was such a kind of one and mostly then this one was successful enough in living, and kindly and not meek and not given to aggression and master in his own house by patient overseeing and successful enough in living by patient persisting and this then is all there is now to be written of the living this one had in him. This one then was of the resisting kind of them that have it in them not to be engulfing, not to be aggressive nor meek in their resisting winning, to be needing to be owning those they need for loving but to be only loving one human being, to be kindly but impersonal really with every other one. That is all then of the being of one of the six of them.

  Another of the six of them was one having it in him to have a good deal in him of the engulfing passionate being of his kind of them but the being in him was not really ever in action, it never amounted to any more in him than to be a little wiggling in him and that was all then, he wanted it to be in action, he wanted to be passionate, and succeeding, and aspiring, and despairing, he tried it always all his living, he was always a little scaring and filling with hope his family for the despair and the possible activity in succeeding in living in him and mostly then nothing ever happened and he came as near in his living as a man can come to failing who is not completely failing in living. He loved a very pale anaemic woman but he never came to marrying, he was always a man considered as perhaps promising successful living and so it went on and on and he was an older one and still he himself and a little some other ones had still a hopeful feeling that this one would sometime be really succeeding, would really be doing something. This then has been a very little description of another one of the six of them.

  Another one of them had the passionate murky engulfing being in him in a completely concentrated form that made him active, sensitive, amusing and successful, quite successful in living. He was always loving but it never was a trouble to him, he was so active he never was knowing that he was engulfing the other one, that he owned those he needed for loving. He was a very active, sensitive, amusing, successful enough person and the murky engulfing passionate resisting being that made him was so concentrated in him that he was a compactly existing being and in a way not interested in anything or any one he was not just then really needing. He was a very nice, a nice, amusing, sensitive, successful enough one of thi
s kind of them, the passionate engulfing resisting kind of them, in this one this being was quite a concentrated pleasant thing. This is then all there will now be written of this one.

  Another one had it in him to be completely certain in all his acting and his feeling and his living that to be dead is to be a dead one and so this one must keep on being a live one and must have everything he can be seizing to keep by him and always this one in his talking and his thinking and his feeling was very certain that he was very certain that to be dead was not to be a dead one and if it were, what then, a really noble man would not let it effect him and he was most certainly such a one. This one then had this being, the resisting being I have been describing as not really in him as engulfing as not really in him not engulfing, as not really in him as passion and yet as just enough in him as passion to give him a little something that made it that mostly one would not trust him and yet that for very many he had some real attraction. This one had some aggression of resisting being in him, this one was quite successful enough in living.

  This one that I am now beginning describing had murky passionate resisting being but its action in him was very intermittent and it was at different times in very different conditions in him. Sometimes it was in him in a fairly concentrated condition and it made of him some one very quick and sensitive and charming and a musician, sometimes it was very quiet in him and then sometimes it burst out as uncontrollable temper in him. Twice in his life it lead to loving and both times then it made trouble for him for he was not strong enough in persisting to be able to keep on owning the ones he needed for loving. This one was not very successful in living.

  This one was very successful in living, this one that I am now beginning describing. This one had this being not at all as murky not at all as engulfing, he had it in him as efficient emotion, as active practical reasonably aggressive resistant action, as steadily and not too sensitively in him, as warmly affectionate and rationally self-understanding. He was a little sentimental and this was all the weakness there was in him. The being in him was perfectly adjusted to steadily succeeding in living. Sometime perhaps there will be a very long history written of him and four others very like him, perhaps in the history of David Hersland and George Dehning.

  This then has been, a little, descriptions of six kinds of being that are kinds of the kinds of them that Alfred Hersland was in living. As I was saying of the kind of being there is in Alfred Hersland there is every kind of variation. There has been now made very short descriptions of six of them. This is now time then for the really beginning describing the living in Alfred Hersland from his beginning.

  As I was saying he was not the oldest of the three Hersland children. Every one knows this now of him. He was the oldest son but not the oldest one of the children in the family living. Being the oldest son and not the oldest of the children has always a certain effect on one having such a position in a family living. That is pretty nearly certain. Alfred Hersland then as I was saying was the oldest son but not the oldest of the children. Martha Hersland was the oldest of the three children. There has been already written a complete history of her living and her being, a pretty nearly completed history of her. She was the oldest of the three Hersland children, Alfred Hersland was three years younger. This is now the beginning of a complete history of his living, the beginning of the regular description of the being he had in him. To begin again then, to begin now with him, to begin now again trying to describe him as a quite young one, as beginning in his living. To begin then.

  Alfred Hersland, Alfy as every one then called him was as a young one of the living of poor people living in small houses in a part of Gossols where the Herslands were the only rich people living. Alfy was of the living of poor people in his daily living then as was his older sister Martha then and his brother who was then quite a little one. All three of the Hersland children were of this living for a good many years in their beginning. It was different in Alfred than it was in Martha, than it was in David Hersland, that I have already been saying. In Alfred it was his daily living then, it was nearly all the living then in him. It was half country half city living. Alfy knew very many poor people then in his young living. In a way then he was then completely of them, completely of their living then. He Was different in his living with them in a way than Martha and David were. He was completely then as a young one of the living of poor people, a half city half country poor people living. He was always then with these kind of men and women and children.

  All three of the Hersland children Martha and Alfred and David were in their young living more of the living of the poor people living near them than they were of their own family living then. Each one of them was in his or her way almost completely in their young living of the living of poor people in a part of Gossols where the Herslands were the only people who were rich of all those living there. All three of them Martha, Alfred and David were then in their young living of the half country half city living of poor people living in that part of Gossols where the Herslands then were living. Each one of the three Hersland children had each one her or his own being in her or in him. Each one was very different from the other two of them, Martha had one kind of being, and Alfred had one kind of being and David had a kind of being and the being in each one was different from that in each of the other two of them.

  Each one of the three of them the Hersland children were then in their young living each in their own way with their own being in them of the living of people living in small houses and being in feeling half city half country men and women and children. All three of them of the Hersland children had this living inside them and around them then when they were beginning living, for a number of years each one of them, and in each one it was a living that was in them in each one different in feeling from each of the other two of them. Each one then of the three of them were freely living when they were each one of them young ones with people living near them. Martha was of the people near her as I was saying and in her as I was saying then she was in a way completely of them and completely not of them, she was of them completely in her daily living and in her feeling, she was completely not of them because of the future living that would be a different one from anything that any of them would naturally be having. Martha was in a way completely in her daily living completely in her feeling all through her young living of the being of the people living in small houses near them, of the women and the men and the children and then later she was more and more completely not of them because of the living that would be her natural future living. She was of them in her feeling, she was completely cut off from them from the future living that would be natural to her in their feeling. She had not then in her feeling in her younger living any feeling of living that was different from their living in them only she had in her her future living and so then she was to them completely cut off from them. She had not in her in her younger living very much almost not any feeling of the living, the rich right American living that would have been a natural living for her to be having. She was to her feeling like those with whom she was mostly then entirely in her young living living. She was pretty nearly altogether like them then in her feeling, she had more money and she did not have to work to earn any and that was a natural thing in her living and then in her feeling she was completely of them and this was in her all of her young living. In Alfred Hersland it was a little different, he really did more things with them than Martha ever did with them. He did everything with them all through his young living but always somehow he had it in him that his mother never was cut off in her feeling from being part of rich right American living. This was not in him as thinking, his mother was not then important to his feeling, she was not then really in any way very important to him, his father was a rich man, every one who knew him knew this about him, Alfred Hersland was completely living the living half city half country of people around him, somehow always he had it in him that his mother was part of rich right American living, this was in him as a kind of re
alisation of rich surfaces in aesthetic feeling, this was in him and his father was a rich man and always he was completely doing everything with those boys and girls and men and women who were living in that part of Gossols where he was living. He did everything with them, he was completely living with them, he did everything they were doing, he did everything with them and they with him, he was completely then living with them.