Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree."
It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.
It has always seemed to me a rare privilege, this, of being an American, a real American, one whose tradition it has taken scarcely sixty years to create. We need only realise our parents, remember our grandparents and know ourselves and our history is complete.
The old people in a new world, the new people made out of the old, that is the story that I mean to tell, for that is what really is and what I really know.
Some of the fathers we must realise so that we can tell our story really, were little boys then, and they came across the water with their parents, the grandparents we need only just remember. Some of these our fathers and our mothers, were not even made then, and the women, the young mothers, our grandmothers we perhaps just have seen once, carried these our fathers and our mothers into the new world inside them, those women of the old world strong to bear them. Some looked very weak and little women, but even these so weak and little, were strong always, to bear many children.
These certain men and women, our grandfathers and grandmothers, with their children born and unborn with them, some whose children were gone ahead to prepare a home to give them; all countries were full of women who brought with them many children; but only certain men and women and the children they had in them, to make many generations for them, will fill up this history for us of a family and its progress.
Many kinds of all these women were strong to bear many children.
One was very strong to bear them and then always she was very strong to lead them.
One was strong to bear them and then always she was strong to suffer with them.
One, a little gentle weary woman was strong to bear many children, and then always after she would sadly suffer for them, weeping for the sadness of all sinning, wearying for the rest she knew her death would bring them.
And then there was one sweet good woman, strong just to bear many children, and then she died away and left them, for that was all she knew then to do for them.
And these four women and the husbands they had with them and the children born and unborn in them will make up the history for us of a family and its progress.
Other kinds of men and women and the children they had with them, came at different times to know them; some, poor things, who never found how they could make a living, some who dreamed while others fought a way to help them, some whose children went to pieces with them, some who thought and thought and then their children rose to greatness through them, and some of all these kinds of men and women and the children they had in them will help to make the history for us of this family and its progress.
These first four women, the grandmothers we need only just remember, mostly never saw each other. It was their children and grandchildren who, later, wandering over the new land, where they were seeking first, just to make a living, and then later, either to grow rich or to gain wisdom, met with one another and were married, and so together they made a family whose progress we are now soon to be watching.
We, living now, are always to ourselves young men and women. When we, living always in such feeling, think back to them who make for us a beginning, it is always as grown and old men and women or as little children that we feel them, these whose lives we have just been thinking. We sometimes talk it long, but really, it is only very little time we feel ourselves ever to have being as old men and women or as children. Such parts of our living are little ever really there to us as present in our feeling. Yes; we, who are always all our lives, to ourselves grown young men and women, when we think back to them who make for us a beginning, it is always as grown old men and women or as little children that we feel them, such as them whose lives we have just been thinking.
Yes it is easy to think ourselves and our friends, all our lives as young grown men and women, indeed it is hard for us to feel even when we talk it long, that we are old like old men and women or little as a baby or as children. Such parts of our living are never really there to us as present, to our feeling.
Yes we are very little children when we first begin to be to ourselves grown men and women. We say then, yes we are children, but we know then, way inside us, we are not to ourselves real as children, we are grown to ourselves, as young grown men and women. Nay we never know ourselves as other than young and grown men and women. When we know we are no longer to ourselves as children. Very little things we are then and very full of such feeling. No, to be feeling ourselves to be as children is like the state between when we are asleep and when we are just waking, it is never really there to us as present to our feeling.
And so it is to be really old to ourselves in our feeling; we are weary and are old, and we know it in our working and our thinking, and we talk it long, and we can see it just by looking, and yet we are a very little time really old to ourselves in our feeling, old as old men and old women once were and still are to our feeling. No, no one can be old like that to himself in his feeling. No it must be always as grown and young men and women that we know ourselves and our friends in our feeling. We know it is not so, by our saying, but it must be so always to our feeling. To be old to ourselves in our feeling is a losing of ourselves like just dropping off into sleeping. To be awake, we must have it that we are to ourselves young and grown men and women.
To be ourself like an old man or an old woman to our feeling must be a horrid losing-self sense to be having. It must be a horrid feeling, like the hard leaving of our sense when we are forced into sleeping or the coming to it when we are just waking. It must be a horrid feeling to have such a strong sense of losing, such a feeling as being to ourselves like children or like grown old men and women. Perhaps to some it is a gentle sense of losing some who like themselves to be without a self sense feeling, but certainly it must be always a sense of self losing in each one who finds himself really having a very young or very old self feeling.
Our mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, in the histories, and the stories, all the others, they all are always little babies grown old men and women or as children for us. No, old generations and past ages never have grown young men and women in them. So long ago they were, why they must be old grown men and women or as babies or as children. No, them we never can feel as young grown men and women. Such only are ourselves and our friends with whom we have been living.
And so since there is no other way to do with our kind of thinking we will make our elders to be for us the grown old men and women in our stories, or the babies or the children. We will be always, in ourselves, the young grown men and women.
And so now we begin, and with such men and women as we have old or as very little, in us, to our thinking.
One of these four women, the grandmothers old always to us the generation of grandchildren, was a sweet good woman, strong just to bear many children and then she died away and left them for that was all she knew then to do for them.
Like all good older women she had all her life born many children and she had made herself a faithful working woman to her husband who was a good enough ordinary older man.
Her husband lived some years after his wife had died away and left him.
He was just a decent well-meaning faithful good-enough ordinary man. He was honest, and he left that very strongly to his children and he worked hard, but he never came to very much with all his faithful working.
He was just a decent honest good-enough man to do ordinary working. He always was good to his wife and always liked her to be with him, and to have good children, and to help him with her working. He always liked all of his children and he always did all that he could to help them, but they were all soon strong enough to leave him, and now that his wife had died away and left him, he was not really needed much by the world or by his children.
They were good daughters and sons to him, but his sayings and his old ordinary ways of doing had not much importance for them. They were strong, all of them, in their work and in their new way of feeling and full always of their new ways of living. It was alright, he always said it to them, and he thought it so really in him, but it was all too new, it could never be any comfort to him. He had been left out of all life while he was still living. It was all too new for his feeling and his wife was no longer there to stay beside him. He felt it always in him and he sighed and at last he just slowly left off living. "Yes," he would say of his son Henry who was the one who took most care and trouble for him, "Yes, Henry, he is a good man and he knows how to make a living. Yes he is a good boy to me always but he never does anything like I tell him. It ain't wrong in him, never I don't say so like that ever for him, only I don't need it any more just to go on like I was living. My wife she did always like I told her, she never knew any way to do it different, and now she is gone peace be with her, and it is all now like it was all over, and I, I got no right now to say do so to my children. I don't ever say it now ever no more to them. What have I got to do with living? I've got no place to go on now like I was really living. I got nobody now always by me to do things like I tell them. I got nothing to say now anymore to my children. I got all done with what I got to say to them. Well young folks always knows things different, and they got it right not to listen, I got nothing now really to do with their new kinds of ways of living. Anyhow Henry, he knows good how to make a living. He makes money such a way I got no right to say it different to him. He makes money and I never can see how his way he can make it and he is honest and a good man always, with all his making such a good living. And he, has got right always to do like he wants it, and he is good to me always, I can't ever say it any different. He always is good to me, and the others, they come to see me always only now it is all different. My wife she stayed right by me always and the children they always got some new place where they got to go and do it different." And then the old man sighed and then soon too he died away and left them.
Henry Dehning was a grown man and for his day a rich one when his father died away and left them. Truly he had made everything for himself very different; but it is not as a young man making himself rich that we are now to feel him, he is for us an old grown man telling it all over to his children.
He is a middle aged man now when he talks about it all to his children, middle aged as perhaps sometimes we ourselves are now to our talking, but he, he is grown old man to our thinking. Yes truly this Henry Dehning had made everything for himself to be very different. His ways and his needs and how much money it took now to live to be decent, and all the habits of his daily life, they were all now for him very different.
And it is strange how all forget when they have once made things for themselves to be very different. A man like Dehning never can feel it real to himself, things as they were in his early manhood, now that he has made his life and habits and his feelings all so different. He says it often, as we all do childhood and old age and pain and sleeping, but it can never anymore be really present to his feeling.
Now the common needs in his life are very different. No, not he, nor they all who have made it for themselves to be so different, can remember meekness, nor poor ways, nor self attendance, nor no comforts, all such things are to all of them as indifferent as if they in their own life time themselves had not made it different. It is not their not wanting to remember these things that were so different. Nay they love to remember, and to tell it over, and most often to their children, what they have been and what they have done and how they themselves have made it all to be so different and how well it is for these children that they have had a strong father who knew how to do it so that youngsters could so have it.
Yes, they say it long and often and yet it is never real to them while they are thus talking. No it is not as really present to their thinking as it is to the young ones who never really had the feeling. These have it through their fear, which makes it for them a really present feeling. The old ones have not such a fear and they have it all only like a dim beginning, like the being as babies or as children or as grown old men and women.
And this father Dehning was always very full of such talking. He had made everything for himself and for his children. He was a good and honest man was Henry Dehning. He was strong and rich and good tempered and respected and he showed it in his look, that look that makes young people think older ones are very aged, and he loved to tell it over to his children, how he had made it all for them so they could have it and not have to work to make it different.
"Yes," he would often say to his children, looking at them with that sharp, side-long, shrewd glance that makes fathers so fearful and so aged to their children. Not that he, Dehning, was ever very dreadful to his children, but there is a burr in a man's voice that always makes for terror in his children and there is a sharp, narrow, outward, shut off glance from an old man that will always fill with dread young grown men and women. No it is only by long equal living that their wives know that there is no terror in them, but the young never can be equal enough with them to really rid themselves of such feeling. No, they only really can get rid of such a feeling when they have found in an old man a complete pathetic falling away into a hapless failing. But mostly for all children and young grown men and women there is much terror in an old man's looking.
Not, we repeat, that the Dehnings had much of such a feeling. Their mother had learnt, by perhaps more than equal living that there really was no terror in him and through her they had lost much of such feeling. But always they had something of that dread in them when he would begin talking to them of what had been and what he had done for them. Then it was that he always became very aged to them and he would strongly hold them with his sharp narrow outward kind of looking that, closing him, went very straight into them.
"Yes," he would often say to his children, "Yes I say to you children, you have an easy time of it nowadays doing nothing. Well! What! yes, you think you always have to have everything you can ever think of wanting. Well I guess yes, you have to have your horses and your teachers and your music and your tutors and all kinds of modern improvements and you can't ever do things for yourself, you always have to have somebody there to do it for you; well, yes you children have an easy time of it nowadays doing nothing. Yes I had it very differently when I was a boy like George here who is just a lazy good for nothing. I didn't have all these new fangled notions. I was already earning my own living and giving myself my own education. Well! What! yes! well I say it to you, you have no idea what an easy time you children all have nowadays just doing nothing. And my poor mother, peace be with her, she never had her own house and all kinds of servants to wait on her like your mother. Yes, well, your mother has everything I can give her, not that she don't deserve everything I can give her, Miss Jenny is the best girl I know and she will always have it as easy as I can make it for her, but you children, you never have done anything yet to make it right that you should always be having everything so easy to you. Yes, I say to you, I don't see with all these modern improvements to always spoil you, you ever will be good to work hard like your father. No all these modern kinds of improvements never can do any good to anybody. Yes, what, well, tell me, you all like to be always explaining to me, tell me exactly what you are going to get from all these your expensive modern kinds of ways of doing. Well I say, just tell me some kind of way so that I can understand you. You know I like to get good value for my money, I always had a name for being pretty good at trading, I say, you know I like to know just what I am getting for my money and you children do certainly cost a great deal of my money, now I say, tell me, I am glad to listen to you, I say you tell me just what you are going to do, to make it good all this money. Well what, what are all these kinds of improvements going to do for you."
The children laughed, "You see you can't tell yet sir," they answered, "it will be different but I guess we will be good for something."
"No you children never will be good for something if I have any right kind of a way to know it," Mr. Dehning answered, and he looked very sharply at them. And this was a cheerful challenge to them for he liked it and they liked it too with him, to light strongly against him in the everlasting struggle of conscious unproved power in the young against dogmatic pride in having done it, of the old ones.
This father was proud of his children and yet, too, very reproachful in his feeling toward them. His wife from perhaps more than equal living with him never much regarded such a feeling in him, but to the young ones it was new for them however often it came to them, for it always meant a new fighting for the right to their kind of power that they felt strongly inside them.
But always there was a little of the dread in them that comes to even grown young men and women from an old man's sharp looking, for deep down is the fear, perhaps he really knows, his look is so outward from him, he certainly has used it all up the things inside him at which young ones are still always looking. And then comes the strong feeling, no he never has had it inside him the way that gives it a real meaning, and so the young ones are firm to go on with their fighting. And always they stay with their father and listen to him.
His wife from her more than equal living, as it sometimes is in women, has not such a dread of his really knowing when it comes to their ways of living, and then it is really only talking with him for now it is completely his own only way of living, and so she never listens to him, is deaf to him or goes away when he begins this kind of talking. But his children always stay and listen to him. They are ready very strongly to explain their new ways to him. But he does not listen to them, he goes on telling what he has done and what he thinks of them.
"No I say I don't think you children ever will be good for something. No you won't ever know how to make a living, not if all the ways I have seen men make a success in working is any kind of use to tell from. Well, what, what do you know with all your always talking, what do you know about how good hard work is done now? What is it you know now, when there is nothing you can any of you ever do anyway I ever saw you trying? No there is too much education business and literary effects in you all for you ever to amount to something, and then you will be always wanting more and so you never will do anything when you have nobody there to always help you. I always tell your mother, she always spoils you wanting you should have all kinds of things that you are never really needing. Not that I have anything to say against your mother's ways of doing. Miss Jenny is the best girl I know, she is too good to you that's all, she spoils all you children the way it always is with a woman giving you all what will never help to make you good for something in any kind of a way to earn a living, what, alright, I say to you, you children have an easy time of it now always doing nothing. Well, what, you think you can do it better with all your literary effects you are all so proud of. Well alright, in a few years now we will see who knows best about you then, I say, you can show me what these new fangled notions and all your modern kinds of improvements and all your education business you and your mamma are now all so fond of can do for you. Yes I say, it is only a few years now and then we all can see how you can do it. No I never had it easy like you children and I had to make it all myself so you could have it different. Yes I am always saying it to you but you think you know it all by yourselves and you never listen to me. Yes it was very different once with me. Yes when I was younger than George here and my brother Adolph was no bigger than my little Hortense, we left home to come and make our way here. We did not have much money so all the family could not come over on the same ship together, and I remember how lonesome Adolph and I were when we went away from home alone together. I remember too while we were waiting in a big bare room for them to give us tickets, I remember we heard some one say our father's name, some man in the same room with us. We did not dare speak to the men near us and we did not know which man it was that knew us, but it made us feel a little better. Yes I say you youngsters have an easy time of it nowadays doing nothing. And that was all years ago and now everything is all very different with me. And my poor mother, peace be with her, she never had a big house and servants to work for her like your mother, and everything she ever wanted I could give her like your mother has now that I can buy it for her. No, my poor mother, peace be with her, it was very different for her. You are named after her Julia but you don't any of you children look much like her. Yes she was a good strong woman was my mother, peace be with her. No you don't any of you ever look much like her and she could do more than all her grandchildren ever can do now all put together. Yes she was a wonderful woman your grandmother, peace be with her. She took care of all us children, we were ten then, and she made our clothes and did her own washing and in between she made peppermint candy for the little ones to sell. She was a wonderful good woman your grandmother, not like you children who never will be good for anything. Yes! I say, I was only a little older than that lazy George here when my poor mother, peace be with her, died away, and we were left there, ten children, and we had to get along without her, and my father, he was an honest and a good man but he never knew much how to make a living, and so he never could help along any of his children. And so what we wanted we had to go out and find out how to get it. And now you children have it very different, you have everything you can ever think you can be needing, and you don't ever show that you can work hard to deserve it. Well you got your literary effect and your new fangled notions and all kinds of education and you all always explain to me how well you know how to do it, I say it will be soon now when I can see what all these new fangled notions and all your kinds of improvements will do for you. See if it can teach you more than we learned working hard and selling candy and anything else we could do to get some money. What, well alright, I say I am good and ready to sit still and watch you to see how you all do it. I am always waiting and if you are any good I will know it. I say I am always watching now to see," and then he went away and left them followed by shouts from them, "Alright sir, you just wait and see."
The young Dehnings had all been born and brought up in the town of Bridgepoint. Their mother too had been born in Bridgepoint. It was there that they had first landed, her father, a harsh man, hard to his wife and to his children but not very good with all his fierceness at knowing how to make a living, and her mother a good gentle wife who never left him, though surely he was not worthy to have her so faithful to him, and she was a good woman who with all her woe was strong to bear many children and always after she was strong to do her best for them and always strong to suffer with them.
And this harsh hard man and his good gentle little wife had many children, and one daughter had long ago married Henry Dehning. It was a happy marriage enough for both of them, their faults and the good things they each had in them made of them a man and wife to very well content all who had to do with them.
All the Dehnings were very fond of Bridgepoint. They had their city and their country house like all the people who were well to do in Bridgepoint.
The Dehnings in the country were simple pleasant people. It was surprising how completely they could shed there the straining luxury and uneasy importance of their city life. Their country house was one of those large commodious wooden double affairs with a wide porch all around and standing well back from the road. In front and at the sides were pleasant lawns and trees and beyond were green open marshes leading down to salt water. In back was a cleared space that spread out into great meadows of stunted oaks no higher than a man's waist, great levels glistening green in the summer and brilliantly red in the autumn stretching away under vast skies, and always here and there was a great tree waving in the wind and wading knee deep in the rough radiant leafy tide.
Yes the Dehnings in the country were simple pleasant people. There they were a contented joyous household. All day the young ones played and bathed and rode and then the family altogether would sail and fish. Yes the Dehnings in the country were simple pleasant people. The Dehning country house was very pleasant too for all young men and boys, the uncles and the cousins of the Dehning family, who all delighted in the friendly freedom of this country home, rare in those days among this kind of people, and so the Dehning house was always full of youth and kindly ways and sport and all altogether there they all always lead a pleasant family life.
The Dehning family itself was made up of the parents and three children. They made a group very satisfying to the eye, prosperous and handsome.
Mr. Dehning was a man successful, strong-featured, gentle tempered, joyous and carrying always his fifty years of life with the good-nature of a cheerful boy. He enjoyed the success that he could boast that he had won, he loved the struggle in which he had always been and always conquered, he was proud of his past and of his present worth, he was proud in his three children and proud that they could teach him things he did not know, he was proud of his wife who was proud of such very different things. "Oh Miss Jenny, she is the best girl I know," he always sang as he came to find her, never content long out of sight of his family when not engrossed by business or cards.
I said that Henry Dehning's wife was proud of such very different things, but that was wrong, she was proud in very different fashion but proud of the same things. She loved his success and the worth with which he conquered and she was not anxious to forget the way that he had come. No she was in her way proud that he himself had done it. She liked his power, and when she ever thought about it she liked the honest way she knew that he had done it. And like him too she was very proud in their three educated children but to her thinking there was very little they could teach her. She knew it all always very well and much better than they could ever know it. But she was very proud of these educated children and she was very proud of her husband Henry Dehning though she knew he always did little things so badly and that he would still always play like a poor man with his fingers and he never would learn not to do it. Yes she was very proud of her husband though he always did little things so badly and she had always to be telling him how a man in his position should know how to do it. She came towards him now when he was through with his talking, and she had one rebuke to him for his always calling her his girl Miss Jenny, and another for the way he had of fidgeting always with his fingers. "Don't do that Henry!" she said to him loudly.
Mrs. Dehning was the quintessence of loud-voiced good-looking prosperity. She was a fair heavy woman, well-looking and firmly compacted and hitting the ground as she walked with the same hard jerk with which she rebuked her husband for his sins. Yes Mrs. Dehning was a woman whose rasping insensibility to gentle courtesy deserved the prejudice one cherished against her, but she was a woman, to do her justice, generous and honest, one whom one might like better the more one saw her less.
Yes it was now all very different for them. It was very pleasant always for Henry Dehning then, to stand and to look about him, yes truly it was now all very different with him. He had his family there about him, a family certain to be a satisfaction to him. They were a group to gratify the feeling of pride in him, they were so prosperous vigorous good-looking, honest, and always respectful to him, and surely they would have later, good hope of winning for themselves all that he could ever wish to them.
Yes it certainly was very different now with him. Could one ever have it real to him that in one life time a man could have it all so different for him, that a man all alone in his single lifetime could make it so that he could have it to be truly all so different in him.
Nay for a man to have it in a single life time all so different for him is more strange than being born and being then a baby and then a child and then a young grown man and then old like a man grown old and then dead and so no more of living, it is more strange because it makes so many lives in this one living. Each one of these lives that he forgets or remembers only as a dim beginning is a whole life to us in our thinking, and so Henry Dehning has had many lives in him to our feeling.
Could one believe it that he was a grown man and he was then living like the man who comes into his place now to do a little selling to the servants in the kitchen. And yet that was one whole full life for him; and then there was the old world where there had been for him such a very different kind of living. Yes as he stands there talking to his children of the things that are never real now any more to his feeling, a man comes up the walk and slinks back when he sees them and goes sneaking to the kitchen and there he sells little things to the women who buy them out of Irish fun or just to be kind to him, for his things are really not good enough for them, they are things for people poorer than any that work in a kitchen; and so Mr. Dehning goes on talking to his children and it is all more real to their feeling than it is now to his thinking, for they have it in their fear which young ones always have inside them, and he, he has it only as a dim beginning as being like a baby or an old grown man or woman. Nay how can he ever have it in him to feel it now as really present to him, such things as meekness or poor ways or self attendance or no comforts, it is only a fear that could make such things be now as present to him, and he has no such a fear ever inside him, not for himself ever or even for his children, for he is strong in a sense of always winning. It is they, the children, who, though they too feel a strength inside them and talk about it very often, yet way down deep in them they know they have no way to be really certain; and always they are brave, good-looking, honest, prosperous children and the father feels strong pride as he looks around him.
The Dehning family was made of this father and mother and three children. Mr. Dehning was very proud of his children and proud of all the things he knew that they could teach him. There were two daughters and a son of them.
Julia Dehning was named after her grandmother, but, as her father often told her, she never looked the least bit like her and yet there was a little in her that made the old world not all lost to her, a little that made one always remember that her grandmother and her father had had always a worn old world to remember.
Yes Julia looked much like her mother. That fair good-looking prosperous woman had stamped her image on each one of her children, and with her eldest, Julia, the stamp went deep, far deeper than just for the fair good-looking exterior.
Julia Dehning was now just eighteen and she showed in all its vigor, the self-satisfied crude domineering American girlhood that was strong inside her. Perhaps she was born too near to the old world to ever attain quite altogether that crude virginity that makes the American girl safe in all her liberty. Yes the American girl is a crude virgin and she is safe in her freedom.
And now, so thought her mother, and Julia was quite of the same opinion, the time had come for Julia to have a husband and to begin her real important living.
Under Julia's very American face, body, clothes and manner and her vigor of the domineering and crude virgin, there were now and then flashes of passion that lit up an older well hidden tradition. Yes in Julia Dehning the prosperous, good-looking, domineering woman was a very attractive being. Julia irradiated energy and brilliant enjoying, she was vigorous, and like her mother, fair and firmly compacted, and she was full of bright hopes, and strong in the spirit of success that she felt always in her. Julia was much given to hearty joyous laughing and to an ardent honest feeling, and she hit the ground as she walked with the same hard jerking with which her mother Mrs. Dehning always rebuked her husband's sinning. Yes Julia Dehning was bright and full of vigor, and with something always a little harsh in her, making underneath her young bright vigorous ardent honest feeling a little of the sense of rasping that was just now in her mother's talking.
And so those who read much in story books surely now can tell what to expect of her, and yet, please reader, remember that this is perhaps not the whole of our story either, neither her father for her, nor the living down her mother who is in her, for I am not ready yet to take away the character from our Julia, for truly she may work out as the story books would have her or we may find all different kinds of things for her, and so reader, please remember, the future is not yet certain for her, and be you well warned reader, from the vain-glory of being sudden in your judgment of her.
After Julia came the boy George and he was not named after his grandfather. And so it was right that in his name he should not sound as if he were the son of his father, so at least his mother decided for him, and the father, he laughed and let her do the way she liked it. And so the boy was named George and the other was there but hidden as an initial to be only used for signing.
The boy George bade fair to do credit to his christening. George Dehning now about fourteen was strong in sport and washing. He was not foreign in his washing. Oh, no, he was really an American.
It's a great question this question of washing. One never can find any one who can be satisfied with anybody else's washing. I knew a man once who never as far as any one could see ever did any washing, and yet he described another with contempt, why he is a dirty hog sir, he never does any washing. The French tell me it's the Italians who never do any washing, the French and the Italians both find the Spanish a little short in their washing, the English find all the world lax in this business of washing, and the East finds all the West a pig, which never is clean with just the little cold water washing. And so it goes.
Yes it has been said that even a flea has other little fleas to bite him, and so it is with this washing, everybody can find some one to condemn for his lack of washing. Even the man who, when he wants to take a little hut in the country to live in, and they said to him, but there is no water to have there, and he said, what does that matter, in this country one can always have wine for his drinking, he too has others who for him don't think enough about their washing; and then there is the man who takes the bath-tub out of his house because he don't believe in promiscuous bathing; and there is the plumber who says, yes I have always got to be fixing bath-tubs for other people to get clean in, and I, I haven't got time enough to wash my hands even; and then there are the French bohemians, now one never would think of them as extravagantly cleanly beings, and yet in a village in Spain they were an astonishment to all the natives, why do you do so much washing, they all demanded of them, when your skin is so white and clean even when you first begin to clean them; and then there is the dubious smelly negro woman who tells you about another woman who is as dirty as a dog and as ragged as a spring chicken, and yet some dogs certainly do sometimes do some washing and this woman had certainly not much sign of ever having had such a thing happening; and then there is the virtuous poor woman who brings her child to the dispensary for a treatment and the doctor says to her, no I won't touch her now anymore until you clean her, and the woman cries out in her indignation, what you think I am poor like a beggar, I got money enough to pay for a doctor, I show you I can hire a real doctor, and she slams the door and rushes out with her daughter. Yes it certainly is very queer in her. All this washing business is certainly most peculiar. Surely it is true that even little fleas have always littler ones to bite them.
And then when we are all through with the pleasant summer and its gorgeous washing, then comes the dreadful question of the winter washing. It's easy enough to wash often when the sun is hot and they are sticky and perspiring and the water in a natural kind of a way is always flowing, but when it comes to be nasty cold as it always is in winter, then it is not any more a pleasure, it is a harsh duty then and hard to follow.
Yes it certainly is all very funny, and so we come back to talk some more about George Dehning, George who in this washing is always strong to do all his duty.
George Dehning was a fair athletic chap, cheery as his father and full of excellent intentions, and though these were almost all lost in their way to their fulfillment, remember, George was only fourteen just then, that time with a boy when he never can have much sense in him, for it nearly always is then with boys that the meekest of them are reckless dare-devil heedless unreflecting fellows, and so reader do not make too much for him of any present weakness in him.
Yes, George Dehning was not at all foreign in his washing but for him, too, the old world was not altogether lost behind him. Sometimes the boy had a way with him, and it would show clear in spite of the fair cheery sporty nature he had in him, a way of looking sleepy and reflecting, and his lids would never be really ever very open, and he would be always only half showing his clear grey eyes that, very often, were bright alive and laughing.
Later such a way of looking could be of great service to him. It would not matter if he never really could have wisdom in him, this look could help him always in his dealings with all men and be of much service too to him with women. He will listen then, and with his veiled eyes it will be as if he were full with thinking, and with himself always well hidden, and so he will be wise; or for a woman, it will be as if he were always in a dream of them. Wisdom and dreaming, both good things when shown at the right time by a young grown man, who wants to be succeeding, always, in every kind of living.
And so for the moment we leave the sporty cheery well washed George Dehning with his background and his future of wisdom and of dreaming, both now pretty well hidden away in the depths of him.
And then there was the littlest one whose name had been all given without regard to the old world behind them. They called her Hortense for that was both elegant and new then. The father let the mother do as she liked with the naming, he laughed and a little he did not like it in him and then a little he was proud of his Miss Jenny and her way of doing.
And so the littlest was Hortense Dehning. She too had the stamp of the fair prosperous woman who had set her seal so firmly on her children, but little Hortense had perhaps a little more in her of that sweet good woman who had born many children and then had died away and left them for that was all she knew then to do for them.
The little Hortense Dehning was not of much importance yet in the family living. Hortense was ten now and full of adoration for her big sister and yet most of all for her brother. She was not very strong and she could not run after him in his playing, but sometimes he would sit and talk to her about himself and his resolutions and the elaborated purposes that he was always losing. George was always very moral and too he was very hopeful. He always began his to-morrow with himself full of a firm resolution to do all things every minute and to do them all very complicatedly. George felt always he must bring up this little sister for he George was the only one who knew the right ways for her.
And so he preached a great deal to her, and little Hortense was very devout and adored her instructor. There was always a dependent loyal up-gazing sweetness in her.
Being the baby of the family she was much petted by her father and always she was overawed by her brother, who was very careful to be noble to her. She was not just then very much with her mother for she was not at this time very important to her. The mother was so busy with her Julia, to find an important and good husband for her. And so little Hortense was left much to her brother and to the governess they had for her.
For us now as well as for the mother the important matter in the history of the Dehning family is the marrying of Julia. I have said that a strong family likeness bound all the three children firmly to their mother. That fair good-looking prosperous woman had stamped her image on each one of her children, but with only the eldest Julia was the stamp deep, deeper than for the fair good-looking exterior.
All the family had always looked up to Julia. They delighted in her daring and in a kind of heroical sweetness there was in her. They respected in her, her educated ways and her knowing always what was the right way she and all of them should be doing. It was not for nothing she was a crude domineering virgin. And she was strong in the success she knew always that she had inside her, and the family always admired and followed after.
Her father loved her energy and vigor, he loved her happiness and the ardent honest feeling in her. He was always very ready to yield to her, he liked to hear her when she explained to him in her quick decisive manner the new faith she had so strongly in her, the new illusions and the theories and new movements that the spirit of her generation had taught to her. And he laughed at her new fangled notions and her educated literary business and all her modern kinds of improvements as he called them, and he abused them and too the way she had of believing that she knew more than her mother, but always it amused the father to have his bright quick daughter explain all these new ways to him. Mr. Dehning knew well the value of what he had learned by living, but his was a nature generous in its feeling and he was always ready to listen to his children when they could fairly demonstrate their ideas to him.
But Herman Dehning's pride and pleasure in his Julia was all exceeded by the loud voiced satisfaction of the mother to whom this brilliant daughter always seemed as the product of the mother's own exertions. In her it was the vanity and exultation of creation as well as of possession and she never fairly learned how completely it was the girl who governed all the family life and how very much of this young life was hidden from her knowledge.
Mr. Dehning had never concerned himself very much with the management of the family's way of living and the social life of his wife and children. These things were all always arranged by Mrs. Dehning and he was well content to let her do it though he often grumbled at the foolishness and the expense and at his children always having everything they ever wanted and so being sure to be always good for nothing.
But always he was very proud of his wife and of his children, though, a little, he always felt it was not right, their new fangled ways of doing, and yet, truly, he was very proud of them always, and indeed they were a group to gratify the pride that he had in him, they were so vigorous prosperous and good-looking, and honest, and always respectful to him, and surely they had good hope of later winning for themselves all the happiness and success he could wish them.
Julia Dehning at eighteen had lived through much of the experience that can prepare a girl for womanhood and marriage.
I have said, there were a number of young men and boys connected with the Dehning family, uncles and cousins, generous decent considerate fellows, frank and honest in their friendships, and simple in the fashion of the elder Dehning. With this kindred Julia had always lived as with the members of one family. These men did not supply for her the training and experience that helps to clear the way for an impetuous woman through a world of passions, they only made a sane and moral back-ground on which she in her later life could learn to lean.
With any member of this kindred there would be, in a young and ardent mind, no thought of love or marriage; nor were the sober business men, young, old, or middle-aged, who came a great deal to the house, attractive to her temper, for Julia was ambitious for passion and position and she needed, too, a strain of romance. No such kind of a man had really come to her and Julia was all ripe for real experience, for even with her well guarded life she had found the sickened sense that comes with learning that some men do wrong. Passionate tempers have greatly this advantage of the unpassionate variety; you can never guard them with such care but that they find themselves full up with real experience and with the after-taste of disillusion, but vitally as they are always hit they always rise and plunge once more, while their poorly passionate fellows who receive a vital blow never rise to faith again.
Julia as a little girl had had the usual experiences of governess guarded children. She was first the confidant, then the advisor, and last the arranger of the love affairs of her established guardians. Then at her finishing school she became acquainted with that dubious character, the adventuress, the type to be found always in all kinds of places, a character eternally attractive in its mystery and daring, and always able to attach unto itself the most intelligent and honest of its comrades and introduce them to queer vices.
And so Julia Dehning, like all other young girls, learnt many kinds of lessons, and she saw many of the kinds of ways that lead to wisdom, and always her life was healthy vigorous and active. She learnt very well all the things young girls of her class were taught then and she learnt too, in all kinds of ways, all the things girls always can learn, somehow, to be wise in. And so Julia was well prepared now to be a woman. She had singing and piano-playing and sport and all regular school learning, she had good looks, honesty, and brilliant courage, and in her young way a certain kind of wisdom.
Always Julia was a passionate young woman and she had too a heroical kind of sweetness in her way of winning. She was a passionate young woman in the sense that always she was all alive and always all the emotions she had in her being were as intense and present to her feeling as a sensation like a pain is to others who are less alive in their living. And all this time too, Julia Dehning was busily arranging and directing the life and aspirations of her family, for she was strong always in her good right to lead them.
And so Julia Dehning when she was seventeen came out upon the world, and she was filled full with courage and experience and wisdom, and she was well ready now with this energy and wisdom to cope with and conquer all the world and all men and women.