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

altogether leave her and the last thing he always would say to her, with the quick movement he had when he felt no more time in him then for her. “Alright, yes, well tomorrow is another day Julia I say to-morrow is another day Julia and you think it all over and we will talk about it further, perhaps to-morrow, I say to-morrow is another day Julia. There is your mother there now Julia, you better go in now to her.”
     It was hard for Julia to have such a kind of resistance fighting against her. It was hard for an impatient and eager temper to endure the kind of a way her father always finished off his long talks with her. It was hard for Julia to have to always begin over every time she started to talk about it with her father. But he was very proud of her, she knew very well his feeling for her, she knew very well too how to win him to agree in the end with her. She loved it in a way the struggle he made each day a new one for her. They loved and admired and respected each other very much this daughter and her father. They understood very well both of them how to please while they were combating with each other. And so each to-morrow they met, and Julia was sturdy and had strong faith in her, and always, her father, a long time each day listened to her.
     Hersland could do nothing all this time but wait for Julia to persuade her father. They were both agreed, Hersland and Julia, that any effort on his part to change Mr. Dehning's opinion would only make the fight for Julia so much harder. It was always there that Mr. Dehning did not like young Hersland, and the noblest words and the best acts, never, in any kind of a distrusted person, give any evidence against his condemnation. It is never facts that tell, they are the same when they mean very different things. It is never facts that can make a man feel any thing to be made different to him when he has any kind of a judgment in him. Facts can never tell him anything truly about another man in his opinion. It was always there, Mr. Dehning somehow did not trust this man. And so it was only Julia, who by always repeating, perhaps could find a way to change him.
     So Julia struggled every day, to have him, arguing discoursing explaining and appealing. She was always winning but it was slow progress like that in very steep and slippery climbing. For every forward movement of three feet she always slipped back two, sometimes all three and often four and five and six and seven. It was long eager steady fighting but the father was slowly understanding that his daughter wanted this thing enough to stand hard by it and with such a feeling and no real fact against the man, such a father was bound to let her some time get married to him.
     “I tell you what Julia what I been thinking. When we all get back to town you can tell better whether you do really want him. I say we better leave off all this talking and just wait till we get home now again. I don't say no Julia and I don't say yes to you. When everybody gets back to town and you are busy and running around with your girls and talking and meeting all the other people and the other kinds of young men, you can tell much better then whether all this business is not all just talking with you. I say now Julia we will wait and just see how you feel about it later. I say we will talk it all over when we get home and you are altogether with all your friends there. I say Julia I don't say no to you and I don't say yes yet to you. I say when we get home we will talk it over again all together and then if nothing turns up new against him, and you still want him, I say if then you still want him enough to trust to him and to trust to your own judgment about him, we will see what we can do about him.” “Alright papa,” Julia said to him, “alright I won't even see Alfy any more till we get back to town then, and papa I won't say another word to you about it. I'll just go and ride around the country and