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

western country could not be used just to keep things green and pretty and so, often, the grass was very dry in summer, but it was very pleasant then lying there watching the birds, black in the bright sunlight and sailing, and the firm white summer clouds breaking away from the horizon and slowly moving. It was very wonderful there in the summer with the dry heat, and the sun burning, and the hot earth for sleeping; and then in the winter with the rain, and the north wind blowing that would bend the trees and often break them, and the owls in the walls scaring you with their tumbling.
     All the rest of the ten acres was for hay and a little vegetable gardening and an orchard with all the kinds of fruit trees that could be got there to do any growing.
     In the summer it was good for generous sweating to help the men make the hay into bails for its preserving and it was well for ones growing to eat radishes pulled with the black earth sticking to them and to chew the mustard and find roots with all kinds of funny flavors in them, and to fill ones hat with fruit and sit on the dry ploughed ground and eat and think and sleep and read and dream and never hear them when they would all be calling; and then when the quail came it was fun to go shooting, and then when the wind and the rain and the ground were ready to help seeds in their growing, it was good fun to help plant them, and the wind would be so strong it would blow the leaves and branches of the trees down around them and you could shout and work and get wet and be all soaking and run out full into the strong wind and let it dry you, in between the gusts of rain that left you soaking. It was fun all the things that happened all the year there then.
     And all around the whole fence that shut these joys in was a hedge of roses, not wild, they had been planted, but now they were very sweet and small and abundant and all the people from that part of Gossols came to pick the leaves to make sweet scented jars and pillows, and always all the Herslands were indignant and they would let loose the dogs to bark and scare them but still the roses grew and always all the people came and took them. And altogether the Herslands always loved it there in their old home in Gossols.
     David Hersland's mother was that good foreign woman who was strong to bear many children and always after was very strong to lead them. The old woman was a great mountain. Her back even in her older age was straight, flat, and firmly supporting. She had it in her to uphold around her, her man, her family, and everybody else whom she saw needing directing. She was a powerful woman and strong to bear many children and always after she would be strong to lead them. She had a few weak ways in her toward some of them, mostly toward one of them who had a bad way of eating too much and being weak and loving, and his mother never could be strong to correct him, no she could not be strong to let his brothers try and save him, and so he died a glutton, but the old mother was dead too by then and she did not have the sorrow of seeing what came to him.
     Always this strong foreign woman was great and good and directing, She led her family out of the old world into the new one and there they learned through her and by themselves, almost every one of them, how to make for themselves each one a sufficient fortune.
     Yes it was she who lead them all out of the old world into the new one. The father was not a man ever to do any such leading. He was a butcher by trade. He was a very gentle creature in his nature. He loved to sit and think and he loved to be important in religion. He was a small man, well enough made, with a nice face, blue eyes, and a little lightish colored beard. He loved his eating and a quiet life, he loved his Martha and his children, and mostly he liked all the world.
     It would never come to him to think of a new world. He never wanted to lose