GERTRUDE STEIN Ultimate Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Essays & Memoirs. Gertrude Stein
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have in them the kind they are of men and women and that comes out to any one that stays with them in the repeating that more and more then repeats the whole of them.
Mr. David Hersland in his middle living was in Gossols making his great fortune. He had many things then in him, his living with men around him in his business living, his living with his wife, his knowing other men and women, his living on the ten acre place in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living his living on the ten acre place with his wife and children and governess and servants there in the house with him and with poor people in small houses near them. All these then came to know him, there was not then in him yet the certain repeating that makes older men and older women clear to every one that looks long at them, there was in him then all that later would break down into repeating. There was for him then his business living, there was for him then his children beginning to have in them individual being, there was for him then his wife and she was having in her then her most important feeling. Every one who then saw him came a little then to know him but it was not easy then for them and this is a history of how each one of them then felt him. There was a mixture in him of several ways in which his kind of men have it in them to work out in them the beginning which is the strongest thing in them and the feeling themselves as big as all the world around them. This mixture in him had many ways of coming out in him, in the middle of his living. It was not easy to know it certainly about him then which mixture was most him, always it came out a good deal in him to everybody who saw him or knew him then that he was a man who was in feeling himself inside him as big as all the world around him, that he was the kind of man who has it in him the being strong in beginning. In his middle living it was hard to tell which kind of a way this would work out in him, whether he had it in him to push on to succeeding in some one thing, whether something in him would push itself through to success through all the beginnings in him, whether it would each time break down in him, whether he would break down into weakness inside him, whether several things would come to a finish that he had as beginnings in him, whether all beginning in him would change off into another beginning, whether he would become bland inside him, whether the beginnings in him would break down into impatient feeling, whether there would be several of these things in him. In his middle living not any one could tell anything of this certainly about him. As I have said once, to the people living in the small houses near them he was then in the big middle of his living, he was, in the beginning of their knowing him, to them, a queer man, with his big ways in buying and his way of owning everything around him to his feeling, they never then had trouble with him, he was then a good neighbor for them to have near them, a rich man to buy from them, they liked him but they had not then any personal feeling for him, he had queer ways in him but they laughed pleasantly for him for he was a rich man and they had a respect for him, he was a good neighbor to any of them who asked him to do anything for them, he was prompt in paying, he was large in buying, he was apart from them, they knew then nothing more about him, his children were a little of them then the people around him then, his wife lived among them the people around him then but above them in her country house feeling, Mr. Hersland was to them a city man and he had a home near them in that part of Gossols where no other rich people were living, to them then he was not living among them, he was a city man to them. They were as I have said about them, these people in the small houses near him, they were in their being half city and half country people. He was to them in the first beginning of their knowing him, a city man for their half country feeling. Slowly they came to know more about him in his country living, they first learned to know more about him as a man with a country house feeling in him, then it came to be for them that they knew him as a city man with a little country living in him, later in his later living they came to know in him city being with their half city feeling and this was for them the end of his living, the end of his being among them. All men and all women, if they keep on in their living come to the repeating that makes it clear to anyone who listens to them then the real nature of them. In the middle living of most men and many women it is very hard to know them, with some of them it is much harder than with others of them. With women, mostly, it is easier to know them then, for there is with them in their middle living less complete mixing of the natures in them than in most men. They, many women, have not in their middle living so much in their way of being to make it all inside them mix into a whole as most men have it in them in their middle living, they have less in the conditions of their living to make the natures in them mix together with the bottom nature of them to make a whole of them than most men have it then in them. In their middle living there is stronger in them the simple repeating that makes them clear to any one who stays with them, with most of them any one who watches them then can come to know them. With most men, though many millions of the many kinds of them have this less in them, most kinds of men in their middle living are mixed up then to be a whole thing then and so it is harder then to be sure with them what is the bottom nature in them, how far this bottom nature of them will drive them; and so children can not tell it of them then how far anger in a father will drive him, girls cannot tell it in a man then how far a feeling in him will bring him, business men and men working with him or under him, men he is directing, men who are fighting him, they are like his children, they are never certain in his middle living how far the power in him will carry him, then it begins a little more to break down into repeating in him, then more and more they see it in him just how far the nature in him will carry him, and so more and more then it breaks down into repeating in him and this goes on to the last end of him. His wife, a wife living with a man, knows it earlier about him in her feeling what is the bottom nature of him, knows it sooner about him than his children or the men who are with him in his business living. In the relation a wife has with a man, in loving, in eating, in drinking, in sleeping, in doctoring, there is more simple repeating, and so the wife living with him comes sooner to feel it in him in his middle living what will come to be later his repeating than any one else who can then know him. Mostly she knows it about him just at the beginning of his middle living, mostly no one else comes to be sure about it in him until toward the beginning of the ending of his middle living. This in a wife, most often, is mostly not a conscious feeling but she has it in her to know about him how far the feeling in him will drive him.
One never can know certainly in any one the nature of him when he is a boy or a young man for then there are many things to drive him that are not the nature of him, in the middle living it is only the nature in him that will drive him and this will come out then always more and more in him as he begins then at the beginning of the ending of his middle living to repeat more and more the whole of him.
With Mr. David Hersland then in his middle living, the men who were working with him, the men who were working under him, they all knew it about him that he was as big as all out doors in his feeling inside him, they knew it about him that he was strong in beginning, they never knew it about him then so that they could be certain then in them how far anything in him would go to an ending, how far the nature in him might drive him, how far there would be success in him, if there ever would come to him a breaking down inside him, what it would be that would fill him in his later living, what would be the repeating in his later living that would show the nature in him. His children had it in them to know it sooner about him than the men in his business living, they knew it sooner about him how strong it was beginning to be in him in his middle living that his beginning would break down into impatient feeling. They knew this about him sooner than the men with him in his business living, they knew it sooner about him how far his nature would take him, they learnt it about him from the anger in him but this to them too was in the beginning of the ending of his middle living. They soon knew then that his beginning would break down into impatient feeling, later they learned it about him that the anger in him would never carry him to any last act against them.
Some of the men who were in business living with Mr. Hersland were always afraid of him, afraid of the big ways in him, afraid of his way of strongly fighting, afraid of the big beginning in him, all through their being with him in business living they were afraid of him, they were afraid when with him when he would be beginning things with them. Later they would think, if it ever came that there was an ending in him in his success in making a great fortune, they would perhaps think then that they had always known this about him but in his middle living they could not know it of him, no one could then know it about him which way the beginning in him would work out through him. There was in him then for every one who knew him in his business living the being great in beginning, there was in him always