The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress (2 page)

     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.