The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress by Gertrude Stein Read Free Book Online

make use of men, slow to anger and tenacious, without heat or bitterness.
     His children knew the value of his judgments and the generous quality of his understanding, still he was of the old generation, they of the new, with all his wisdom surely he must fail to see the meanings in the unaccustomed.
     “You know Julia,” Mr. Dehning went on after a silent interval of walking when they had each been pretty busy with their own thinking, “you know Julia, your mother doesn't like him.” “Oh! mamma!” Julia broke out, “you know how mamma is, he talks about love and beauty and mamma thinks it ought to be all wedding dresses and a fine house when it isn't money and business. She would be the same about anybody that I would want.”
     “Yes Julia, those are your literary notions but a lawyer has got to be a business man now and you like success and money as well as any one. You have always had everything you wanted and you don't want to get along without it. Literary effects and modern improvements are alright for women but with Hersland it ought to be different, it ought to be that he has the kind of sense he needs in his business. I don't say he hasn't got good sense in him to make a success in him and you want to be careful I say Julia, how far you go with him.” “I know papa just what you mean, and that's alright papa, I know it, but you know yourself papa it isn't everything, now, is it. I know papa how you feel about it, you think we young ones are all wrong the way we look at it, but you say yourself papa how different things are nowadays from the way they used to be when you began with it, and surely papa it can't hurt a man to be interesting even if he wants to make a success in his business.”
     Mr. Dehning shook his head but he did not so carry much conviction to his daughter and on this day they said no more about the matter.
     And so Julia began and surely she would win in the struggle. She worked every day and very hard, and slowly she began to bring her father to it. Mrs. Dehning would have to agree if he said she could have it and no one else's opinion in the matter was important.
     Time and again Julia would be sure she had succeeded, for her father always listened to her “yes papa I know it, I know what you mean and it's alright, only you know yourself everything nowadays is very different, you know that yourself papa, you know you always say it,” and he liked to hear her say it, and he listened with amusement, and he approved when she knew how to do it, when she brought out with great fervor and with much repeating, great arguments against all his objections. He always openly admired the bright way she had then to make clear to him all her theories and convictions, the new faith in her, the new ideas she had of life and business.
     And then Julia would be sure she had convinced him, for how could a reasonable man ever resist it, she knew she had good reasons in her.
     And each day when their talk was ending and she was saying to him, “you know papa you say yourself now that it's all different, I know what you mean papa, always, I know how you want me to do it, but papa, really, I am not talking without thinking hard about it, you know I listen to you and want to understand it but you know papa, now don't you, that it will be alright and that I am alright just the way you like to have me do it,” and then he would have stopped listening to her and his mind would have sort of shut up away from her, and she still held his arm for they had been walking all this time up and down as was their custom every afternoon together, and yet he then himself had quite slipped away from her, and now he would be looking at her with that sharp completed look that, always so full of his own understanding, could not leave it open any way to her to reach inside to him to let in any other kind of a meaning.
     And then he would for that time