Hemingway’s compelling inspiration was war, both as a personal and symbolic ex-
perience and as a continuing condition of humankind. New readers have continued
to find inspiration in his symbolic ritualism dedicated to the survival of selfhood in
the midst of chaos. Hemingway also created a revolution in language which influ-
enced the narrative and dialogue of succeeding generations of novelists. During the
last twenty years of his life he published little; as adventurer, hunter, and journalist
he sometimes seemed to resemble one of his own created characters. When in 1952
he got it again “the way it was” in The Old Man and the Sea, a nearly flawless
short novel, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (1953) and the Nobel Prize (1954)
with a promptness that suggested an overdue recognition.
Born in Oak Park, near Chicago, on July 21, 1899, Ernest Miller Hemingway
was the son of a physician who initiated him into the rituals of hunting and fish-
ing in the Michigan north woods; he also gained an early proficiency in football
and boxing. Graduated from high school, he became a reporter for the Kansas
City Star in 1917. By 1918 he was in volunteer war service with an American am-
bulance unit in France, gained transfer to the Italian front, and was seriously
wounded. After the armistice, with Italian decorations for valor, he returned to
newspaper work. In 1920 he covered the Greco-Turkish War and was appointed a
Paris correspondent.
Postwar Paris was thronged with young artists. Intellectual ferment and artis-
tic accomplishment expressed the same spiritual defeat that other expatriate intel-
lectuals sought in escape. In his first novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), with
Gertrude Stein’s remark, “You are all a lost generation,” as epigraph, such charac-
ters as Lady Brett and Jake Barnes, the journalist unmanned by war wounds, ex-
pressed in another form the sterile wasteland of Eliot’s poem of 1922. His first
major book, In Our Time (1925), was a collection of stories in which Nick Adams
is a sort of alter ego for the young Hemingway. Hemingway’s psychological pene-
tration and originality in plot and dialogue reawakened interest in the short story;
at his unsurpassed best over limited stretches, he wrote some of the finest short
stories of his time.
Two war novels and two uniquely interesting topical books brought Heming-
way to the end of his major accomplishment in 1940. A Farewell to Arms (1929),
based on his Italian service, is a distinguished war novel, although lingering senti-
ment breaks through the taut economy of the stylized language. Here he rejected
the classic tragic unity in the catastrophic defeat of the lovers, who have haz-
ardously escaped to safe harbor, only to face the cruel futility of Catherine’s fatal
accident in childbirth. Dying, she murmurs to Frederic, “I’m not a bit afraid. It’s
just a dirty trick.” The author’s naturalistic reinterpretation of fate was consistent.
Robert Jordan, in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), loses his life for a cause al-
ready lost, and in fact not even a genuine cause. All causes in Hemingway’s tragic
vision are already lost, because that is nature and the way things are; but the losers
need not be lost. What distinguishes human beings and gives them salvation is their
faithfulness in the ordeal which all are called on to face, and if by some dirty trick
one dies anyway, “we owe God a death”; but we can keep the rendezvous with
courage. Lady Brett knew the code: “It’s sort of what we have instead of God.”
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In For Whom the Bell Tolls, again love is found, and lost, as it seems, by the
callous futility of nature. This episode of the Spanish Revolution is also an unfor-
gettable revelation of the Spanish earth and its people. Spain and the bullfight had
appeared in his first novel; later, in Death in the Afternoon (1932), he gave an in-
terpretation of the bullfight as ordeal and ritual, “very moral to me because I feel
very fine while it is going on and have a feeling of life and death and mortality.”
The hunt is a comparable ordeal and ritual in Green Hills of Africa (1935).
Like Stephen Crane, whom he admired as the pioneer of the naturalistic war
novel, Hemingway embraced the cult of experience. Note his journalistic engage-
ments on behalf of the Spanish loyalists between 1936 and 1940, or again on behalf
of liberal causes in the war-torn forties, as correspondent in China, and in the air
over France, and on the Normandy beach. Crane’s thirst for life was fatal, and Hem-
ingway’s nearly as compelling. Always his writing had its roots in his experience.
When he was unable to meet his own high standards, he did not publish; neverthe-
less, there are some fine passages in his posthumously published Islands in the
Stream (1970). In Green Hills he asserted his creed “to write as well as I can and
learn as I go along. At the same time I have my life * * * which is a damned good
life.” You could only write “what you truly felt” and never “when there is no water
in the well.” Of the bullfight he remarked, “I was trying to learn to write, com-
mencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things and the most fun-
damental is violent death.” Death became, in his fiction, the extreme limit of
Most of Hemingway’s novels and topical volumes are mentioned above. The Complete Short Stories
of Ernest Hemingway, 1987, supersedes earlier collections and includes some stories previously unpub-
lished. The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories, 1938, contains all the stories of In Our Time,
1925, Men without Women, 1927; and Winner Take Nothing, 1933; some previously uncollected stories;
and a play. Torrents of Spring, 1926, is a parody of Sherwood Anderson. Two early volumes are Three
Stories and Ten Poems, 1923; and In Our Time, Paris, 1924. The posthumous A Moveable Feast, 1964,
is a memoir of Paris life, while the severely edited The Dangerous Summer, 1985, tells of bullfighting.
Posthumous collections include By-Line: Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four
Decades, edited by William White, 1967; The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War,
1969; and The Nick Adams Stories, 1972. Carlos Baker edited Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters,
1917–1961, 1981. Larry W. Phillips edited Ernest Hemingway on Writing, 1984.
Multivolume biographies are Peter Griffin, Along with Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years, 1985, and
Less than a Treason: Hemingway in Paris, 1990; and Michael Reynolds, The Young Hemingway, 1986,
Hemingway: The Paris Years, 1989, Hemingway: The American Homecoming, 1992, and Hemingway:
The 1930’s, 1997. Earlier full biographies include Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 1969;
Jeffrey Meyers, Hemingway, A Biography, 1985; and Kenneth S. Lynn, Hemingway: His Life and Work,
1987. Memoirs include L. R. Arnold, High on the Wild with Hemingway, 1968; A. E. Hotchner, Papa
Hemingway, 1969 (revised, 1983); James McLendon, Papa: Hemingway at Key West, 1972; Vernon
Klimo and Will Oursler, Hemingway and Jake, 1972; Gregory H. Hemingway, Papa, 1976; Mary Welsh,
How It Was, 1977; and Arnold Samuelson, With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba, 1985. See
also Anthony Burgess, Hemingway and His World, 1978.
Early studies are Carlos Baker, Hemingway: The Writer as Artist, 1952 (revised, 1956); Philip Young,
Ernest Hemingway, 1952 (revised as Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration, 1966); and Charles A. Fen-
ton, The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway: The Early Years, 1954. See also Leicester Hemingway,
My Brother Ernest Hemingway, 1962; and Lillian Ross, Portrait of Hemingway, 1962.
Criticism includes Constance Cappel Montgomery, Hemingway in Michigan, 1966; Sheridan Baker,
Ernest Hemingway: An Introduction and Interpretation, 1967; Leo Gurko, Ernest Hemingway and the
Pursuit of Heroism, 1968; Richard B. Hovey, Hemingway: The Inward Terrain, 1968; Robert O.
Stephens, Hemingway’s Nonfiction: The Public Voice, 1968; Jackson J. Benson, Hemingway: The
Writer’s Art of Self-Defense, 1969; Emily Watts, Ernest Hemingway and the Arts, 1971; Arthur Wald-
horn, A Reader’s Guide to Ernest Hemingway, 1972; Sheldon N. Grebstein, Hemingway’s Craft, 1973;
Scott Donaldson, By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway, 1977; Mark Spilka, Hem-
ingway’s Quarrel with Androgyny, 1990; and Nancy R. Comley and Robert Scholes, Hemingway’s Gen-
ders, 1994.
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experience and the final test of the genuine ordeal. Death appears in his writing in
violent forms, or understated as “bad luck,” or symbolically projected as mutilation
or sterility in Jake Barnes, Nick Adams, and the protagonists of To Have and Have
Not (1937) and Across the River and Into the Trees (1950), his weakest novels.
Hemingway left his Cuban estate in November 1960 for a new “last home”
in a remote spot near Ketchum, Idaho. During the next eight months he suffered
two long illnesses requiring hospitalization. In the early morning of July 2, 1961,
standing beside his beloved gun-rack in his home, he died of head wounds result-
ing from the discharge of his favorite shotgun, in his own hands.
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Part I and Part II
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ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Big Two-Hearted River: Part I 1
The train went on up the track out of sight, around one of the hills of burnt timber.
Nick sat down on the bundle of canvas and bedding the baggage man had pitched
out of the door of the baggage car. There was no town, nothing but the rails and
the burned-over country. The thirteen saloons that had lined the one street of Seney
had not left a trace. The foundations of the Mansion House hotel stuck up above
the ground. The stone was chipped and split by the fire. It was all that was left of
the town of Seney. Even the surface had been burned off the ground.
Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had expected to
find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to
the bridge over the river. The river was there. It swirled against the log spiles of
the bridge. Nick looked down into the clear, brown water, colored from the peb-
bly bottom, and watched the trout keeping themselves steady in the current with
wavering fins. As he watched them they changed their positions by quick angles,
only to hold steady in the fast water again. Nick watched them a long time.
He watched them holding themselves with their noses into the current, many
trout in deep, fast moving water, slightly distorted as he watched far down through
the glassy convex surface of the pool, its surface pushing and swelling smooth
against the resistance of the log-driven piles of the bridge. At the bottom of the
pool were the big trout. Nick did not see them at first. Then he saw them at the
bottom of the pool, big trout looking to hold themselves on the gravel bottom in a
varying mist of gravel and sand, raised in spurts by the current.
Nick looked down into the pool from the bridge. It was a hot day. A king-
fisher flew up the stream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into a stream
and seen trout. They were very satisfactory. As the shadow of the kingfisher moved
up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking
the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through the surface of the water, caught
the sun, and then, as he went back into the stream under the surface, his shadow
seemed to float down the stream with the current, unresisting, to his post under
the bridge where he tightened facing up into the current.
Nick’s heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling.
He turned and looked down the stream. It stretched away, pebbly-bottomed
with shallows and big boulders and a deep pool as it curved away around the foot
of a bluff.
Nick walked back up the ties to where his pack lay in the cinders beside the
railway track. He was happy. He adjusted the pack harness around the bundle,
“Big Two-Hearted River,” Part I & II. Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon &
Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway. Copyright © 1925 by
Charles Scribner’s Sons. Copyright © renewed 1953 by Ernest Hemingway. All rights reserved.
1. First published in This Quarter, Spring 1925, “Big Two-Hearted River” was printed as the conclud-
ing story of In Our Time, 1925. The two parts were separated by a brief description of a hanging (here
omitted), unrelated except that, as with other mostly violent episodes interposed between the stories of
the book, the events related are all a part of life in our time. The present text is taken from The Short
Stories of Ernest Hemingway, 1938.
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pulling straps tight, slung the pack on his back, got his arms through the shoulder
straps and took some of the pull off his shoulders by leaning his forehead against
the wide band of the tumpline. Still, it was too heavy. It was much too heavy. He
had his leather rod-case in his hand and leaning forward to keep the weight of the
pack high on his shoulders he walked along the road that paralleled the railway
track, leaving the burned town behind in the heat, and then turned off around a
hill with a high, fire-scarred hill on either side onto a road that went back into the
country. He walked along the road feeling the ache from the pull of the heavy
pack. The road climbed steadily. It was hard work walking up-hill. His muscles
ached and the day was hot, but Nick felt happy. He felt he had left everything be-
hind, the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs. It was all back of him.
From the time he had gotten down off the train and the baggage man had
thrown his pack out of the open car door things had been different. Seney was
burned, the country was burned over and changed, but it did not matter. It could
not all be burned. He knew that. He hiked along the road, sweating in the sun,
climbing to cross the range of hills that separated the railway from the pine plains.
The road ran on, dipping occasionally, but always climbing. Nick went on
up. Finally the road after going parallel to the burnt hillside reached the top. Nick
leaned back against a stump and slipped out of the pack harness. Ahead of him,
as far as he could see, was the pine plain. The burned country stopped off at the
left with the range of hills. On ahead islands of dark pine trees rose out of the
plain. Far off to the left was the line of the river. Nick followed it with his eye and
caught glints of the water in the sun.
There was nothing but the pine plain ahead of him, until the far blue hills that
marked the Lake Superior height of land. He could hardly see them, faint and far
away in the heat-light over the plain. If he looked too steadily they were gone. But
if he only half-looked they were there, the far-off hills of the height of land.
Nick sat down against the charred stump and smoked a cigarette. His pack
balanced on the top of the stump, harness holding ready, a hollow molded in it
from his back. Nick sat smoking, looking out over the country. He did not need to
get his map out. He knew where he was from the position of the river.
As he smoked, his legs stretched out in front of him, he noticed a grasshopper
walk along the ground and up onto his woolen sock. The grasshopper was black.
As he had walked along the road, climbing, he had started many grasshoppers from
the dust. They were all black. They were not the big grasshoppers with yellow and
black or red and black wings whirring out from their black wing sheathing as they
fly up. These were just ordinary hoppers, but all a sooty black in color. Nick had
wondered about them as he walked, without really thinking about them. Now, as
he watched the black hopper that was nibbling at the wool of his sock with its
fourway lip, he realized that they had all turned black from living in the burned-
over land. He realized that the fire must have come the year before, but the
grasshoppers were all black now. He wondered how long they would stay that way.
Carefully he reached his hand down and took hold of the hopper by the
wings. He turned him up, all his legs walking in the air, and looked at his jointed
belly. Yes, it was black too, iridescent where the back and head were dusty.
“Go on, hopper,” Nick said, speaking out loud for the first time. “Fly away
somewhere.”
He tossed the grasshopper up into the air and watched him sail away to a
charcoal stump across the road.
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Nick stood up. He leaned his back against the weight of his pack where it
rested upright on the stump and got his arms through the shoulder straps. He
stood with the pack on his back on the brow of the hill looking out across the
country, toward the distant river and then struck down the hillside away from the
road. Underfoot the ground was good walking. Two hundred yards down the hill-
side the fire line stopped. Then it was sweet fern, growing ankle high, to walk
through, and clumps of jack pines; a long undulating country with frequent rises
and descents, sandy underfoot and the country alive again.
Nick kept his direction by the sun. He knew where he wanted to strike the
river and he kept on through the pine plain, mounting small rises to see other rises
ahead of him and sometimes from the top of a rise a great solid island of pines off
to his right or his left. He broke off some sprigs of the heathery sweet fern, and put
them under his pack straps. The chafing crushed it and he smelled it as he walked.
He was tired and very hot, walking across the uneven, shadeless pine plain.
At any time he knew he could strike the river by turning off to his left. It could not
be more than a mile away. But he kept on toward the north to hit the river as far
upstream as he could go in one day’s walking.
For some time as he walked Nick had been in sight of one of the big islands
of pine standing out above the rolling high ground he was crossing. He dipped
down and then as he came slowly up to the crest of the bridge he turned and made
toward the pine trees.
There was no underbrush in the island of pine trees. The trunks of the trees
went straight up or slanted toward each other. The trunks were straight and brown
without branches. The branches were high above. Some interlocked to make a
solid shadow on the brown forest floor. Around the grove of trees was a bare
space. It was brown and soft underfoot as Nick walked on it. This was the over-
lapping of the pine needle floor, extending out beyond the width of the high
branches. The trees had grown tall and the branches moved high, leaving in the
sun this bare space they had once covered with shadow. Sharp at the edge of this
extension of the forest floor commenced the sweet fern.
Nick slipped off his pack and lay down in the shade. He lay on his back and
looked up into the pine trees. His neck and back and the small of his back rested
as he stretched. The earth felt good against his back. He looked up at the sky,
through the branches, and then shut his eyes. He opened them and looked up
again. There was a wind high up in the branches. He shut his eyes again and went
to sleep.
Nick woke stiff and cramped. The sun was nearly down. His pack was heavy
and the straps painful as he lifted it on. He leaned over with the pack on and
picked up the leather rod-case and started out from the pine trees across the sweet
fern swale, toward the river. He knew it could not be more than a mile.
He came down a hillside covered with stumps into a meadow. At the edge of
the meadow flowed the river. Nick was glad to get to the river. He walked up-
stream through the meadow. His trousers were soaked with the dew as he walked.
After the hot day, the dew had come quickly and heavily. The river made no sound.
It was too fast and smooth. At the edge of the meadow, before he mounted to a
piece of high ground to make camp, Nick looked down the river at the trout ris-
ing. They were rising to insects come from the swamp on the other side of the
stream when the sun went down. The trout jumped out of water to take them.
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While Nick walked through the little stretch of meadow alongside the stream,
trout had jumped high out of water. Now as he looked down the river, the insects
must be settling on the surface, for the trout were feeding steadily all down the
stream. As far down the long stretch as he could see, the trout were rising, making
circles all down the surface of the water, as though it were starting to rain.
The ground rose, wooded and sandy, to overlook the meadow, the stretch of
river and the swamp. Nick dropped his pack and rod-case and looked for a level
piece of ground. He was very hungry and he wanted to make his camp before he
cooked. Between two jack pines, the ground was quite level. He took the ax out
of the pack and chopped out two projecting roots. That leveled a piece of ground
large enough to sleep on. He smoothed out the sandy soil with his hand and pulled
all the sweet fern bushes by their roots. His hands smelled good from the sweet
fern. He smoothed the uprooted earth. He did not want anything making lumps
under the blankets. When he had the ground smooth, he spread his three blan-
kets. One he folded double, next to the ground. The other two he spread on top.
With the ax he slit off a bright slab of pine from one of the stumps and split it
into pegs for the tent. He wanted them long and solid to hold in the ground. With
the tent unpacked and spread on the ground, the pack, leaning against a jackpine,
looked much smaller. Nick tied the rope that served the tent for a ridge-pole to the
trunk of one of the pine trees and pulled the tent up off the ground with the other
end of the rope and tied it to the other pine. The tent hung on the rope like a can-
vas blanket on a clothesline. Nick poked a pole he had cut up under the back peak
of the canvas and then made it a tent by pegging out the sides. He pegged the sides
out taut and drove the pegs deep, hitting them down into the ground with the flat
of the ax until the rope loops were buried and the canvas was drum tight.
Across the open mouth of the tent Nick fixed cheesecloth to keep out mosqui-
toes. He crawled inside under the mosquito bar with various things from the pack
to put at the head of the bed under the slant of the canvas. Inside the tent the light
came through the brown canvas. It smelled pleasantly of canvas. Already there
was something mysterious and homelike. Nick was happy as he crawled inside the
tent. He had not been unhappy all day. This was different though. Now things
were done. There had been this to do. Now it was done. It had been a hard trip.
He was very tired. That was done. He had made his camp. He was settled. Noth-
ing could touch him. It was a good place to camp. He was there, in the good place.
He was in his home where he had made it. Now he was hungry.
He came out, crawling under the cheesecloth. It was quite dark outside. It
was lighter in the tent.
Nick went over to the pack and found, with his fingers, a long nail in a paper
sack of nails, in the bottom of the pack. He drove it into the pine tree, holding it
close and hitting it gently with the flat of the ax. He hung the pack up on the nail.
All his supplies were in the pack. They were off the ground and sheltered now.
Nick was hungry. He did not believe he had ever been hungrier. He opened
and emptied a can of pork and beans and a can of spaghetti into the frying pan.
“I’ve got a right to eat this kind of stuff, if I’m willing to carry it,” Nick said.
His voice sounded strange in the darkening woods. He did not speak again.
He started a fire with some chunks of pine he got with the ax from a stump.
Over the fire he stuck a wire grill, pushing the four legs down into the ground
with his boot. Nick put the frying pan on the grill over the flames. He was hun-
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grier. The beans and spaghetti warmed. Nick stirred them and mixed them to-
gether. They began to bubble, making little bubbles that rose with difficulty to the
surface. There was a good smell. Nick got out a bottle of tomato catchup and cut
four slices of bread. The little bubbles were coming faster now. Nick sat down be-
side the fire and lifted the frying pan off. He poured about half the contents out
into the tin plate. It spread slowly on the plate. Nick knew it was too hot. He
poured on some tomato catchup. He knew the beans and spaghetti were still too
hot. He looked at the fire, then at the tent, he was not going to spoil it all by burn-
ing his tongue. For years he had never enjoyed fried bananas because he had never
been able to wait for them to cool. His tongue was very sensitive. He was very
hungry. Across the river in the swamp, in the almost dark, he saw a mist rising.
He looked at the tent once more. All right. He took a full spoonful from the plate.
“Chrise,” Nick said, “Geezus Chrise,” he said happily.
He ate the whole plateful before he remembered the bread. Nick finished the
second plateful with the bread, mopping the plate shiny. He had not eaten since a
cup of coffee and a ham sandwich in the station restaurant at St. Ignace. It had
been a very fine experience. He had been that hungry before, but had not been
able to satisfy it. He could have made camp hours before if he had wanted to.
There were plenty of good places to camp on the river. But this was good.
Nick tucked two big chips of pine under the grill. The fire flared up. He had
forgotten to get water for the coffee. Out of the pack he got a folding canvas
bucket and walked down the hill, across the edge of the meadow, to the stream.
The other bank was in the white mist. The grass was wet and cold as he knelt on
the bank and dipped the canvas bucket into the stream. It bellied and pulled hard
in the current. The water was ice cold. Nick rinsed the bucket and carried it full
up to the camp. Up away from the stream it was not so cold.
Nick drove another big nail and hung up the bucket full of water. He dipped
the coffee pot half full, put some more chips under the grill onto the fire and put
the pot on. He could not remember which way he made coffee. He could remem-
ber an argument about it with Hopkins, but not which side he had taken. He de-
cided to bring it to a boil. He remembered now that was Hopkins’s way. He had
once argued about everything with Hopkins. While he waited for the coffee to
boil, he opened a small can of apricots. He liked to open cans. He emptied the can
of apricots out into a tin cup. While he watched the coffee on the fire, he drank
the juice syrup of the apricots, carefully at first to keep from spilling, then medita-
tively, sucking the apricots down. They were better than fresh apricots.
The coffee boiled as he watched. The lid came up and coffee and grounds ran
down the side of the pot. Nick took it off the grill. It was a triumph for Hopkins.
He put sugar in the empty apricot cup and poured some of the coffee out to cool.
It was too hot to pour and he used his hat to hold the handle of the coffee pot. He
would not let it steep in the pot at all. Not the first cup. It should be straight Hop-
kins all the way. Hop deserved that. He was a very serious coffee drinker. He was
the most serious man Nick had ever known. Not heavy, serious. That was a long
time ago. Hopkins spoke without moving his lips. He had played polo. He made
millions of dollars in Texas. He had borrowed carfare to go to Chicago, when the
wire came that his first big well had come in. He could have wired for money. That
would have been too slow. They called Hop’s girl the Blonde Venus. Hop did not
mind because she was not his real girl. Hopkins said very confidently that none of
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them would make fun of his real girl. He was right. Hopkins went away when the
telegram came. That was on the Black River. It took eight days for the telegram to
reach him. Hopkins gave away his .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol to Nick. He
gave his camera to Bill. It was to remember him always by. They were all going
fishing again next summer. The Hop Head was rich. He would get a yacht and
they would all cruise along the north shore of Lake Superior. He was excited but
serious. They said good-bye and all felt bad. It broke up the trip. They never saw
Hopkins again. That was a long time ago on the Black River.
Nick drank the coffee, the coffee according to Hopkins. The coffee was bitter.
Nick laughed. It made a good ending to the story. His mind was starting to work.
He knew he could choke it because he was tired enough. He spilled the coffee out
of the pot and shook the grounds loose into the fire. He lit a cigarette and went
inside the tent. He took off his shoes and trousers, sitting on the blankets, rolled
the shoes up inside the trousers for a pillow and got in between the blankets.
Out through the front of the tent he watched the glow of the fire, when the
night wind blew on it. It was a quiet night. The swamp was perfectly quiet. Nick
stretched under the blanket comfortably. A mosquito hummed close to his ear.
Nick sat up and lit a match. The mosquito was on the canvas, over his head. Nick
moved the match quickly up to it. The mosquito made a satisfactory hiss in the
flame. The match went out. Nick lay down again under the blanket. He turned on
his side and shut his eyes. He was sleepy. He felt sleep coming. He curled up under
the blanket and went to sleep.
Big Two-Hearted River: Part II
In the morning the sun was up and the tent was starting to get hot. Nick crawled
out under the mosquito netting stretched across the mouth of the tent, to look at
the morning. The grass was wet on his hands as he came out. He held his trousers
and his shoes in his hands. The sun was just up over the hill. There was the
meadow, the river and the swamp. There were birch trees in the green of the
swamp on the other side of the river.
The river was clear and smoothly fast in the early morning. Down about two
hundred yards were three logs all the way across the stream. They made the water
smooth and deep above them. As Nick watched, a mink crossed the river on the
logs and went into the swamp. Nick was excited. He was excited by the early
morning and the river. He was really too hurried to eat breakfast, but he knew he
must. He built a little fire and put on the coffee pot.
While the water was heating in the pot he took an empty bottle and went
down over the edge of the high ground to the meadow. The meadow was wet with
dew and Nick wanted to catch grasshoppers for bait before the sun dried the grass.
He found plenty of good grasshoppers. They were at the base of the grass stems.
Sometimes they clung to a grass stem. They were cold and wet with the dew, and
could not jump until the sun warmed them. Nick picked them up, taking only the
medium-sized brown ones, and put them into the bottle. He turned over a log and
just under the shelter of the edge were several hundred hoppers. It was a grasshop-
per lodging house. Nick put about fifty of the medium browns into the bottle.
While he was picking up the hoppers the others warmed in the sun and com-
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menced to hop away. They flew when they hopped. At first they made one flight
and stayed stiff when they landed, as though they were dead.
Nick knew that by the time he was through with breakfast they would be as
lively as ever. Without dew in the grass it would take him all day to catch a bottle
full of good grasshoppers and he would have to crush many of them, slamming at
them with his hat. He washed his hands at the stream. He was excited to be near
it. Then he walked up to the tent. The hoppers were already jumping stiffly in the
grass. In the bottle, warmed by the sun, they were jumping in a mass. Nick put in
a pine stick as a cork. It plugged the mouth of the bottle enough, so the hoppers
could not get out and left plenty of air passage.
He had rolled the log back and knew he could get grasshoppers there every
morning.
Nick laid the bottle full of jumping grasshoppers against a pine trunk. Rapidly
he mixed some buckwheat flour with water and stirred it smooth, one cup of flour,
one cup of water. He put a handful of coffee in the pot and dipped a lump of grease
out of a can and slid it sputtering across the hot skillet. On the smoking skillet he
poured smoothly the buckwheat batter. It spread like lava, the grease spitting
sharply. Around the edges the buckwheat cake began to firm, then brown, then
crisp. The surface was bubbling slowly to porousness. Nick pushed under the
browned under surface with a fresh pine chip. He shook the skillet sideways and
the cake was loose on the surface. I won’t try and flop it, he thought. He slid the
chip of clean wood all the way under the cake, and flopped it over onto its face. It
sputtered in the pan.
When it was cooked Nick regreased the skillet. He used all the batter. It made
another big flapjack and one smaller one.
Nick ate a big flapjack and a smaller one, covered with apple butter. He put
apple butter on the third cake, folded it over twice, wrapped it in oiled paper and
put it in his shirt pocket. He put the apple butter jar back in the pack and cut
bread for two sandwiches.
In the pack he found a big onion. He sliced it in two and peeled the silky outer
skin. Then he cut one half into slices and made onion sandwiches. He wrapped
them in oiled paper and buttoned them in the other pocket of his khaki shirt. He
turned the skillet upside down on the grill, drank the coffee, sweetened and yellow
brown with the condensed milk in it, and tidied up the camp. It was a good camp.
Nick took his fly rod out of the leather rod-case, jointed it, and shoved the
rod-case back into the tent. He put on the reel and threaded the line through the
guides. He had to hold it from hand to hand, as he threaded it, or it would slip
back through its own weight. It was a heavy, double tapered fly line. Nick had
paid eight dollars for it a long time ago. It was made heavy to lift back in the air
and come forward flat and heavy and straight to make it possible to cast a fly
which has no weight. Nick opened the aluminum leader box. The leaders were
coiled between the damp flannel pads. Nick had wet the pads at the water cooler
on the train up to St. Ignace. In the damp pads the gut leaders had softened and
Nick unrolled one and tied it by a loop at the end to the heavy fly line. He fas-
tened a hook on the end of the leader. It was a small hook; very thin and springy.
Nick took it from his hook book, sitting with the rod across his lap. He tested
the knot and the spring of the rod by pulling the line taut. It was a good feeling.
He was careful not to let the hook bite into his finger.
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He started down to the stream, holding his rod, the bottle of grasshoppers
hung from his neck by a thong tied in half hitches around the neck of the bottle.
His landing net hung by a hook from his belt. Over his shoulder was a long flour
sack tied at each corner into an ear. The cord went over his shoulder. The sack
flapped against his legs.
Nick felt awkward and professionally happy with all his equipment hanging
from him. The grasshopper bottle swung against his chest. In his shirt the breast
pockets bulged against him with the lunch and his fly book.
He stepped into the stream. It was a shock. His trousers clung tight to his
legs. His shoes felt the gravel. The water was a rising cold shock.
Rushing, the current sucked against his legs. Where he stepped in, the water
was over his knees. He waded with the current. The gravel slid under his shoes.
He looked down at the swirl of water below each leg and tipped up the bottle to
get a grasshopper.
The first grasshopper gave a jump in the neck of the bottle and went out into
the water. He was sucked under in the whirl by Nick’s right leg and came to the
surface a little way down stream. He floated rapidly, kicking. In a quick circle,
breaking the smooth surface of the water, he disappeared. A trout had taken him.
Another hopper poked his face out of the bottle. His antennae wavered. He
was getting his front legs out of the bottle to jump. Nick took him by the head
and held him while he threaded the slim hook under his chin, down through his
thorax and into the last segments of his abdomen. The grasshopper took hold of
the hook with his front feet, spitting tobacco juice on it. Nick dropped him into
the water.
Holding the rod in his right hand he let out line against the pull of the
grasshopper in the current. He stripped off line from the reel with his left hand
and let it run free. He could see the hopper in the little waves of the current. It
went out of sight.
There was a tug on the line. Nick pulled against the taut line. It was his first
strike. Holding the now living rod across the current, he brought in the line with his
left hand. The rod bent in jerks, the trout pumping against the current. Nick knew it
was a small one. He lifted the rod straight up in the air. It bowed with the pull.
He saw the trout in the water jerking with his head and body against the shift-
ing tangent of the line in the stream.
Nick took the line in his left hand and pulled the trout, thumping tiredly
against the current, to the surface. His back was mottled the clear, water-over-
gravel color, his side flashing in the sun. The rod under his right arm, Nick
stooped, dipping his right hand into the current. He held the trout, never still,
with his moist right hand, while he unhooked the barb from his mouth, then
dropped him back into the stream.
He hung unsteadily in the current, then settled to the bottom beside a stone.
Nick reached down his hand to touch him, his arm to the elbow under water. The
trout was steady in the moving stream, resting on the gravel, beside a stone. As
Nick’s fingers touched him, touched his smooth, cool, underwater feeling he was
gone, gone in a shadow across the bottom of the stream.
He’s all right, Nick thought. He was only tired.
He had wet his hand before he touched the trout, so he would not disturb the
delicate mucus that covered him. If a trout was touched with a dry hand, a white
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fungus attacked the unprotected spot. Years before when he had fished crowded
streams, with fly fishermen ahead of him and behind him, Nick had again and
again come on dead trout, furry with white fungus, drifted against a rock, or float-
ing belly up in some pool. Nick did not like to fish with other men on the river.
Unless they were of your party, they spoiled it.
He wallowed down the stream, above his knees in the current, through the
fifty yards of shallow water above the pile of logs that crossed the stream. He did
not rebait his hook and held it in his hand as he waded. He was certain he could
catch small trout in the shallows, but he did not want them. There would be no
big trout in the shallows this time of day.
Now the water deepened up his thighs sharply and coldly. Ahead was the
smooth dammed-back flood of water above the logs. The water was smooth and
dark; on the left, the lower edge of the meadow; on the right the swamp.
Nick leaned back against the current and took a hopper from the bottle. He
threaded the hopper on the hook and spat on him for good luck. Then he pulled
several yards of line from the reel and tossed the hopper out ahead onto the fast,
dark water. It floated down towards the logs, then the weight of the line pulled the
bait under the surface. Nick held the rod in his right hand, letting the line run out
through his fingers.
There was a long tug. Nick struck and the rod came alive and dangerous, bent
double, the line tightening, coming out of water, tightening, all in a heavy, danger-
ous, steady pull. Nick felt the moment when the leader would break if the strain
increased and let the line go.
The reel ratcheted into a mechanical shriek as the line went out in a rush. Too
fast. Nick could not check it, the line rushing out, the reel note rising as the line
ran out.
With the core of the reel showing, his heart feeling stopped with the excitement,
leaning back against the current that mounted icily his thighs, Nick thumbed the reel
hard with his left hand. It was awkward getting his thumb inside the fly reel frame.
As he put on pressure the line tightened into sudden hardness and beyond the
logs a huge trout went high out of water. As he jumped, Nick lowered the tip of
the rod. But he felt, as he dropped the tip to ease the strain, the moment when the
strain was too great; the hardness too tight. Of course, the leader had broken.
There was no mistaking the feeling when all spring left the line and it became dry
and hard. Then it went slack.
His mouth dry, his heart down, Nick reeled in. He had never seen so big a
trout. There was a heaviness, a power not to be held, and then the bulk of him, as
he jumped. He looked as broad as a salmon.
Nick’s hand was shaky. He reeled in slowly. The thrill had been too much. He
felt, vaguely, a little sick, as though it would be better to sit down.
The leader had broken where the hook was tied to it. Nick took it in his hand.
He thought of the trout somewhere on the bottom, holding himself steady over
the gravel, far down below the light, under the logs, with the hook in his jaw. Nick
knew the trout’s teeth would cut through the snell of the hook. The hook would
imbed itself in his jaw. He’d bet the trout was angry. Anything that size would be
angry. That was a trout. He had been solidly hooked. Solid as a rock. He felt like
a rock, too, before he started off. By God, he was a big one. By God, he was the
biggest one I ever heard of.
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Nick climbed out onto the meadow and stood, water running down his
trousers and out of his shoes, his shoes squlchy. He went over and sat on the logs.
He did not want to rush his sensations any.
He wriggled his toes in the water, in his shoes, and got out a cigarette from
his breast pocket. He lit it and tossed the match into the fast water below the logs.
A tiny trout rose at the match, as it swung around in the fast current. Nick
laughed. He would finish the cigarette.
He sat on the logs, smoking, drying in the sun, the sun warm on his back, the
river shallow ahead entering the woods, curving into the woods, shallows, light
glittering, big water-smooth rocks, cedars along the bank and white birches, the
logs warm in the sun, smooth to sit on, without bark, gray to the touch; slowly
the feeling of disappointment left him. It went away slowly, the feeling of disap-
pointment that came sharply after the thrill that made his shoulders ache. It was
all right now. His rod lying out on the logs, Nick tied a new hook on the leader,
pulling the gut tight until it grimped into itself in a hard knot.
He baited up, then picked up the rod and walked to the far end of the logs to
get into the water, where it was not too deep. Under and beyond the logs was a
deep pool. Nick walked around the shallow shelf near the swamp shore until he
came out on the shallow bed of the stream.
On the left, where the meadow ended and the woods began, a great elm tree
was uprooted. Gone over in a storm, it lay back into the woods, its roots clotted
with dirt, grass growing in them, rising a solid bank beside the stream. The river
cut to the edge of the uprooted tree. From where Nick stood he could see deep
channels, like ruts, cut in the shallow bed of the stream by the flow of the current.
Pebbly where he stood and pebbly and full of boulders beyond; where it curved
near the tree roots, the bed of the stream was marly and between the ruts of deep
water green weed fronds swung in the current.
Nick swung the rod back over his shoulder and forward, and the line, curving
forward, laid the grasshopper down on one of the deep channels in the weeds. A
trout struck and Nick hooked him.
Holding the rod far out toward the uprooted tree and sloshing backward in
the current, Nick worked the trout, plunging, the rod bending alive, out of the
danger of the weeds into the open river. Holding the rod, pumping alive against
the current, Nick brought the trout in. He rushed, but always came, the spring of
the rod yielding to the rushes, sometimes jerking under water, but always bringing
him in. Nick eased downstream with the rushes. The rod above his head he led
the trout over the net, then lifted.
The trout hung heavy in the net, mottled trout back and silver sides in the
meshes. Nick unhooked him; heavy sides, good to hold, big undershot jaw, and
slipped him, heaving and big sliding, into the long sack that hung from his shoul-
ders in the water.
Nick spread the mouth of the sack against the current and it filled, heavy with
water. He held it up, the bottom in the stream, and the water poured out through
the sides. Inside at the bottom was the big trout, alive in the water.
Nick moved downstream. The sack out ahead of him sunk heavy in the water,
pulling from his shoulders.
It was getting hot, the sun hot on the back of his neck.
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Nick had one good trout. He did not care about getting many trout. Now the
stream was shallow and wide. There were trees along both banks. The trees of the
left bank made short shadows on the current in the forenoon sun. Nick knew there
were trout in each shadow. In the afternoon, after the sun had crossed toward the
hills, the trout would be in the cool shadows on the other side of the stream.
The very biggest ones would lie up close to the bank. You could always pick
them up there on the Black. When the sun was down they all moved out into the
current. Just when the sun made the water blinding in the glare before it went
down, you were liable to strike a big trout anywhere in the current. It was almost
impossible to fish then, the surface of the water was blinding as a mirror in the
sun. Of course, you could fish upstream, but in a stream like the Black, or this,
you had to wallow against the current and in a deep place, the water piled up on
you. It was no fun to fish upstream with this much current.
Nick moved along through the shallow stretch watching the banks for deep
holes. A beech tree grew close beside the river, so that the branches hung down
into the water. The stream went back in under the leaves. There were always trout
in a place like that.
Nick did not care about fishing that hole. He was sure he would get hooked
in the branches.
It looked deep though. He dropped the grasshopper so the current took it
under water, back in under the overhanging branch. The line pulled hard and Nick
struck. The trout threshed heavily, half out of water in the leaves and branches.
The line was caught. Nick pulled hard and the trout was off. He reeled in and
holding the hook in his hand, walked down the stream.
Ahead, close to the left bank, was a big log. Nick saw it was hollow; pointing
up river the current centered it smoothly, only a little ripple spread each side of the
log. The water was deepening. The top of the hollow log was gray and dry. It was
partly in the shadow.
Nick took the cork out of the grasshopper bottle and a hopper clung to it. He
picked him off, hooked him and tossed him out. He held the rod far out so that
the hopper on the water moved into the current flowing into the hollow log. Nick
lowered the rod and the hopper floated in. There was a heavy strike. Nick swung
the rod against the pull. It felt as though he were hooked into the log itself, except
for the live feeling.
He tried to force the fish out into the current. It came, heavily.
The line went slack and Nick thought the trout was gone. Then he saw him,
very near, in the current, shaking his head, trying to get the hook out. His mouth
was clamped shut. He was fighting the hook in the clear flowing current.
Looping in the line with his left hand, Nick swung the rod to make the line
taut and tried to lead the trout toward the net, but he was gone, out of sight, the
line pumping. Nick fought him against the current, letting him thump in the water
against the spring of the rod. He shifted the rod to his left hand, worked the trout
upstream, holding his weight, fighting on the rod, and then let him down into the
net. He lifted him clear of the water, a heavy half circle in the net, the net drip-
ping, unhooked him and slid him into the sack.
He spread the mouth of the sack and looked down in at the two big trout
alive in the water.
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Companies, 2007
Through the deepening water, Nick waded over to the hollow log. He took
the sack off, over his head, the trout flopping as it came out of water, and hung it
so the trout were deep in the water. Then he pulled himself up on the log and sat,
the water from his trousers and boots running down into the stream. He laid his
rod down, moved along to the shady end of the log and took the sandwiches out
of his pocket. He dipped the sandwiches in the cold water. The current carried
away the crumbs. He ate the sandwiches and dipped his hat full of water to drink,
the water running out through his hat just ahead of his drinking.
It was cool in the shade, sitting on the log. He took a cigarette out and struck
a match to light it. The match sunk into the gray wood, making a tiny furrow.
Nick leaned over the side of the log, found a hard place and lit the match. He sat
smoking and watching the river.
Ahead the river narrowed and went into a swamp. The river became smooth
and deep and the swamp looked solid with cedar trees, their trunks close together,
their branches solid. It would not be possible to walk through a swamp like that.
The branches grew so low. You would have to keep almost level with the ground
to move at all. You could not crash through the branches. That must be why the
animals that lived in swamps were built the way they were, Nick thought.
He wished he had brought something to read. He felt like reading. He did not
feel like going on into the swamp. He looked down the river. A big cedar slanted
all the way across the stream. Beyond that the river went into the swamp.
Nick did not want to go in there now. He felt a reaction against deep wading
with the water deepening up under his armpits, to hook big trout in places impos-
sible to land them. In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came to-
gether overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep
water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a
tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down the stream
any further today.
He took out his knife, opened it and stuck it in the log. Then he pulled up the
sack, reached into it and brought out one of the trout. Holding him near the tail,
hard to hold, alive, in his hand, he whacked him against the log. The trout quiv-
ered, rigid. Nick laid him on the log in the shade and broke the neck of the other
fish the same way. He laid them side by side on the log. They were fine trout.
Nick cleaned them, slitting them from the vent to the tip of the jaw. All the
insides and the gills and tongue came out in one piece. They were both males; long
gray-white strips of milt, smooth and clean. All the insides clean and compact,
coming out all together. Nick tossed the offal ashore for the minks to find.
He washed the trout in the stream. When he held them back up in the water
they looked like live fish. Their color was not gone yet. He washed his hands and
dried them on the log. Then he laid the trout on the sack spread out on the log,
rolled them up in it, tied the bundle and put it in the landing net. His knife was still
standing, blade stuck in the log. He cleaned it on the wood and put it in his pocket.
Nick stood up on the log, holding his rod, the landing net hanging heavy, then
stepped into the water and splashed ashore. He climbed the bank and cut up into
the woods, toward the high ground. He was going back to camp. He looked back.
The river just showed through the trees. There were plenty of days coming when
he could fish the swamp.
1924 1925, 1925
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Gertrude Stein
(1874–1946)
R
U pon her deathbed, Gertrude Stein is reported to have addressed the watchers at her side,
asking “What is the answer?” Receiving no reply, she continued, “In that case, what is the ques-
tion?” It was an end emblematic of the enigma she had presented to her contemporaries through
her life and work. Residing from 1903 until the end of her life in Paris, she wrote in English
and insisted upon her essential Americanism. Suggesting by the title of one of her best books,
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), that her subject was her long-time companion, she
used the occasion to detail her own life and opinions. In other, frequently much more difficult,
works, she pursued a modernism in prose and poetry analogous to the structural discontinuities
of twentieth-century painting.
She was born the youngest of seven children in a Jewish family in Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
Her grandparents had emigrated from Austria to the United States prior to the Civil War and
her father’s business took her for almost three years of her childhood to Vienna and Paris, where
she learned German and French before returning to the United States to be educated in English
in California. Orphaned as an adolescent but left financially independent, she followed her broth-
er Leo to Harvard, where she attended the Harvard Annex (now Radcliffe), studying under
William Vaughn Moody, George Santayana, Josiah Royce, and William James. After four years
as a medical student at Johns Hopkins, she left without a degree. Joining Leo in Europe, she
settled with him in 1903 at 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris, in the flat that she shared later with
Alice B. Toklas and that became until just before World War II a famous center for Parisian artis-
tic life. Quick to appreciate the newer artistic movements, she and her brother early began to
acquire Cézannes, Renoirs, and Gauguins. In 1905 she began her friendship with Picasso, who
soon painted her. Meanwhile, she had begun to write, and in time her fame brought to her door
many admiring young writers, including Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest
Hemingway, and Richard Wright.
For her first book, Three Lives (1909), one of her best, she found no publisher, but printed
it at her own expense. A second major work, The Making of Americans, was completed in 1908,
but not published until 1925. The Autobiography fared much better, and Four Saints in Three
Acts (1934), with music by Virgil Thomson, had a modest success on stage in New York. Although
for many readers she remained a puzzle, she was in her last decade a celebrity. Continually an
experimenter, she wrote prose, plays, and verse that caused other writers to examine their own
There is no collected edition. Besides the titles named above, major works include a collection of prose poems, Tender Buttons , 1914; How to Write ,
1931; Lectures in America , 1935; The Geographical History of America , 1936; and Wars I Have Seen , 1945. Carl Van Vechten edited Selected
Writings , 1946; and The Yale Edition of the Unpublished Writings of Gertrude Stein , 8 vols., 1951–1958. Richard Kostelanetz edited The Yale
Gertrude Stein: Selections , 1980. Edward Burns and Ulla E. Dydo edited The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder , 1996.
Recent substantial biographical studies are Linda Wagner-Martin, Favored Strangers: Gertrude Stein and Her Family , 1995; and Brenda Wineapple,
Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein , 1996. Earlier are Elizabeth Sprigge, Gertrude Stein: Her Life and Work , 1957; John Malcolm Brinnin, The Third
Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World , 1959; and Howard Greenfield, Gertrude Stein: A Biography , 1973. See also Renate Stendhal, ed., Gertrude Stein
in Words and Pictures , 1994. Critical works include Rosalind S. Miller, Gertrude Stein: Form and Intelligibility , 1949; Donald Sutherland, Gertrude Stein:
A Biography of Her Work , 1951 (reprinted, 1972); J. Michael Hoffman, The Development of Abstractionism in the Writings of Gertrude Stein , 1965;
Allegra Stewart, Gertrude Stein and the Present , 1967; Norman Weinstein, Gertrude Stein and the Literature of the Modern Consciousness , 1970;
Richard Bridgman, Gertrude Stein in Pieces , 1970; Robert B. Haas, A Primer for the Gradual Understanding of Gertrude Stein , 1971; James R. Mellow,
Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company , 1974; Wendy Steiner, Exact Resemblance to Exact Resemblance: The Literary Portraiture of Gertrude
Stein , 1978; Jayne L. Walker, The Making of a Modernist: Gertrude Stein from Three Lives to Tender Buttons , 1984; Shirley Neuman and Ira B. Nadel,
eds., Gertrude Stein and the Making of Literature , 1988; Harriett S. Chessman, The Public Is Invited to the Dance: Representation, the Body, and
Dialogue in Gertrude Stein , 1989; and Lisa Ruddick, Reading Gertrude Stein: Body, Text, Gnosis , 1990.
Gertrude Stein: Author Bio
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words and the relationships between them in ways they had never examined them before.
“Observation and construction make imagination,” she observed in The Autobiography. For
herself, the observation that seemed most important was the discontinuity of human perceptions,
and the structural principle that seemed to work best was reiteration. Always sure of her vision
and her methods, she once wrote, “Nobody knows what I am trying to do but I do and I know
when I succeed.”
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Gertrude Stein The Gentle Lena © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2000
The Gentle Lena 1
Gertrude Stein
Lena was patient, gentle, sweet and german. She had been a servant for four years
and had liked it very well.
Lena had been brought from Germany to Bridgepoint by a cousin and had been
in the same place there for four years.
This place Lena had found very good. There was a pleasant, unexacting mistress
and her children, and they all liked Lena very well.
There was a cook there who scolded Lena a great deal but Lena’s german patience
held no suffering and the good incessant woman really only scolded so for Lena’s
good.
Lena’s german voice when she knocked and called the family in the morning
was as awakening, as soothing, and as appealing, as a delicate soft breeze in midday,
summer. She stood in the hallway every morning a long time in her unexpectant and
unsuffering german patience calling to the young ones to get up. She would call
and wait a long time and then call again, always even, gentle, patient, while the young
ones fell back often into that precious, tense, last bit of sleeping that gives a strength
of joyous vigor in the young, over them that have come to the readiness of middle
age, in their awakening.
Lena had good hard work all morning, and on the pleasant, sunny afternoons
she was sent out into the park to sit and watch the little two year old girl baby of
the family.
The other girls, all them that make the pleasant, lazy crowd, that watch the chil-
dren in the sunny afternoons out in the park, all liked the simple, gentle, german
Lena very well. They all, too, liked very well to tease her, for it was so easy to make
her mixed and troubled, and all helpless, for she could never learn to know just what
the other quicker girls meant by the queer things they said.
The two or three of these girls, the ones that Lena always sat with, always worked
together to confuse her. Still it was pleasant, all this life for Lena.
The little girl fell down sometimes and cried, and then Lena had to soothe her.
When the little girl would drop her hat, Lena had to pick it up and hold it. When
the little girl was bad and threw away her playthings, Lena told her she could not
have them and took them from her to hold until the little girl should need them.
It was all a peaceful life for Lena, almost as peaceful as a pleasant leisure. The
other girls, of course, did tease her, but then that only made a gentle stir within her.
Lena was a brown and pleasant creature, brown as blonde races often have them
brown, brown, not with the yellow or the red or the chocolate brown of sun burned
countries, but brown with the clear color laid flat on the light toned skin beneath,
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1 “The Gentle Lena” is the third of the stories in Three Lives (1909), which contains also “The Good Anna” and “Melanctha,” the last-named a
celebrated early study of a black woman by a white writer. Lena was based in part upon a servant girl Stein had known when she was a
medical student in Baltimore. Another influence was Gustave Flaubert’s “A Simple Heart,” in his Three Tales (Trois Contes , 1877), which Stein
had earlier translated from French to English.
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the plain, spare brown that makes it right to have been made with hazel eyes, and
not too abundant straight, brown hair, hair that only later deepens itself into brown
from the straw yellow of a german childhood.
Lena had the flat chest, straight back and forward falling shoulders of the patient
and enduring working woman, though her body was now still in its milder girlhood
and work had not yet made these lines too clear.
The rarer feeling that there was with Lena, showed in all the even quiet of
her body movements, but in all it was the strongest in the patient, old-world igno-
rance, and earth made pureness of her brown, flat, soft featured face. Lena had
eyebrows that were a wondrous thickness. They were black, and spread, and very
cool, with their dark color and their beauty, and beneath them were her hazel
eyes, simple and human, with the earth patience of the working, gentle, german
woman.
Yes it was all a peaceful life for Lena. The other girls, of course, did tease her, but
then that only made a gentle stir within her.
“What you got on your finger Lena,” Mary, one of the girls she always sat with,
one day asked her. Mary was good natured, quick, intelligent and Irish.
Lena had just picked up the fancy paper made accordion that the little girl had
dropped beside her, and was making it squeak sadly as she pulled it with her brown
strong, awkward finger.
“Why, what is it, Mary, paint?” said Lena, putting her finger to her mouth to taste
the dirt spot.
“That’s awful poison Lena, don’t you know?” said Mary, “that green paint that
you just tasted.”
Lena had sucked a good deal of the green paint from her finger. She stopped
and looked hard at the finger. She did not know just how much Mary meant by what
she said.
“Ain’t it poison, Nellie, that green paint, that Lena sucked just now,” said Mary.
“Sure it is Lena, its real poison, I ain’t foolin’ this time anyhow.”
Lena was a little troubled. She looked hard at her finger where the paint was,
and she wondered if she had really sucked it.
It was still a little wet on the edges and she rubbed it off a long time on the inside
of her dress, and in between she wondered and looked at the finger and thought, was
it really poison that she had just tasted.
“Ain’t it too bad, Nellie, Lena should have sucked that,” Mary said.
Nellie smiled and did not answer. Nellie was dark and thin, and looked Italian.
She had a big mass of black hair that she wore high up on her head, and that made
her face look very fine.
Nellie always smiled and did not say much, and then she would look at Lena
to perplex her.
And so they all three sat with their little charges in the pleasant sunshine a long
time. And Lena would often look at her finger and wonder if it was really poison that
she had just tasted and then she would rub her finger on her dress a little harder.
Mary laughed at her and teased her and Nellie smiled a little and looked queerly
at her.
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Then it came time, for it was growing cooler, for them to drag together the lit-
tle ones, who had begun to wander, and to take each one back to its own mother.
And Lena never knew for certain whether it was really poison, that green stuff that
she had tasted.
During these four years of service, Lena always spent her Sundays out at the house
of her aunt, who had brought her four years before to Bridgepoint.
This aunt, who had brought Lena, four years before, to Bridgepoint, was a hard,
ambitious, well meaning, german woman. Her husband was a grocer in the town, and
they were very well to do. Mrs. Haydon, Lena’s aunt had two daughters who were just
beginning as young ladies, and she had a little boy who was not honest and who
was very hard to manage.
Mrs. Haydon was a short, stout, hard built, german woman. She always hit the
ground very firmly and compactly as she walked. Mrs. Haydon was all a compact and
well hardened mass, even to her face, reddish and darkened from its early blonde,
with its hearty, shiny cheeks, and doubled chin well covered over with the up roll
from her short, square neck.
The two daughters, who were fourteen and fifteen looked like unkneaded,
unformed mounds of flesh beside her.
The elder girl, Mathilda, was blonde, and slow, and simple, and quite fat. The
younger, Bertha, who was almost as tall as her sister, was dark, and quicker, and she
was heavy, too, but not really fat.
These two girls the mother had brought up very firmly. They were well taught
for their position. They were always both well dressed, in the same kinds of hats
and dresses, as is becoming in two german sisters. The mother liked to have them
dressed in red. Their best clothes were red dresses, made of good heavy cloth, and
strongly trimmed with braid of a glistening black. They had stiff, red felt hats, trimmed
with black velvet ribbon, and a bird. The mother dressed matronly, in a bonnet
and in black, always sat between her two big daughters, firm, directing, and repressed.
The only weak spot in this good german woman’s conduct was the way she spoiled
her boy who was not honest and who was very hard to manage.
The father of this family was a decent, quiet, heavy, and uninterfering german
man. He tried to cure the boy of his bad ways, and make him honest, but the mother
could not make herself let the father manage, and so the boy was brought up very
badly.
Mrs. Haydon’s girls were now only just beginning as young ladies, and so to get
her niece, Lena, married, was just then the most important thing that Mrs. Haydon
had to do.
Mrs. Haydon had four years before gone to Germany to see her parents, and had
taken the girls with her. This visit had been for Mrs. Haydon most successful, though
her children had not liked it very well.
Mrs. Haydon was a good and generous woman, and she patronized her parents
grandly, and all the cousins who came from all about to see her. Mrs. Haydon’s peo-
ple were of the middling class of farmers. They were not peasants, and they lived in
a town of some pretension, but it all seemed very poor and smelly to Mrs. Haydon’s
american born daughters.
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Mrs. Haydon liked it all. It was familiar, and then here she was so wealthy and
important. She listened and decided, and advised all of her relations how to do things
better. She arranged their present and their future for them, and showed them how
in the past they had been wrong in all their methods.
Mrs. Haydon’s only trouble was with her two daughters, whom she could not
make behave well to her parents. The two girls were very nasty to all their numerous
relations. Their mother could hardly make them kiss their grandparents, and every
day the girls would get a scolding. But then Mrs. Haydon was so very busy that she
did not have time to really manage her stubborn daughters.
These hard working, earth-rough german cousins were to these american born
children, ugly and dirty and as far below them as were italian or negro workmen, and
they could not see how their mother could ever bear to touch them, and then all the
women dressed so funny, and were worked all rough and different.
The two girls stuck up their noses at them all, and always talked in English to
each other about how they hated all these people and how they wished their mother
would not do so. The girls could talk some German, but they never chose to use it.
It was her eldest brother’s family that most interested Mrs. Haydon. Here there
were eight children, and out of the eight, five of them were girls.
Mrs. Haydon thought it would be a fine thing to take one of these girls back with
her to Bridgepoint and get her well started. Everybody liked that she should do so
and they were all willing that it should be Lena.
Lena was the second girl in her large family. She was at this time just seven-
teen years old. Lena was not an important daughter in the family. She was always sort
of dreamy and not there. She worked hard and went very regularly at it, but even
good work never seemed to bring her near.
Lena’s age just suited Mrs. Haydon’s purpose. Lena could first go out to service,
and learn how to do things, and then, when she was a little older, Mrs. Haydon could
get her a good husband. And then Lena was so still and docile, she would never want
to do things her own way. And then, too, Mrs. Haydon, with all her hardness had
wisdom, and she could feel the rarer strain there was in Lena.
Lena was willing to go with Mrs. Haydon. Lena did not like her german life very
well. It was not the hard work but the roughness that disturbed her. The people were
not gentle, and the men when they were glad were very boisterous, and would lay
hold of her and roughly tease her. They were good people enough around her, but
it was all harsh and dreary for her.
Lena did not really know that she did not like it. She did not know that she was
always dreamy and not there. She did not think whether it would be different for her
away off there in Bridgepoint. Mrs. Haydon took her and got her different kinds of
dresses, and then took her with them to the steamer. Lena did not really know what
it was that had happened to her.
Mrs. Haydon, and her daughters, and Lena traveled second class on the steamer.
Mrs. Haydon’s daughters hated that their mother should take Lena. They hated to
have a cousin, who was to them, little better than a nigger, and then everybody on
the steamer there would see her. Mrs. Haydon’s daughters said things like this to their
mother, but she never stopped to hear them, and the girls did not dare to make
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their meaning very clear. And so they could only go on hating Lena hard, together.
They could not stop her from going back with them to Bridgepoint.
Lena was very sick on the voyage. She thought, surely before it was over that she
would die. She was so sick she could not even wish that she had not started. She
could not eat, she could not moan, she was just blank and scared, and sure that every
minute she would die. She could not hold herself in, nor help herself in her trou-
ble. She just staid where she had been put, pale, and scared, and weak, and sick,
and sure that she was going to die.
Mathilda and Bertha Haydon had no trouble from having Lena for a cousin
on the voyage, until the last day that they were on the ship, and by that time they
had made their friends and could explain.
Mrs. Haydon went down every day to Lena, gave her things to make her better,
held her head when it was needful, and generally was good and did her duty by her.
Poor Lena had no power to be strong in such trouble. She did not know how
to yield to her sickness nor endure. She lost all her little sense of being in her suf-
fering. She was so scared, and then at her best, Lena, who was patient, sweet and
quiet, had not self-control, nor any active courage.
Poor Lena was so scared and weak, and every minute she was sure that she
would die.
After Lena was on land again a little while, she forgot all her bad suffering. Mrs.
Haydon got her the good place, with the pleasant unexacting mistress, and her
children and Lena began to learn some English and soon was very happy and content.
All her Sundays out Lena spent at Mrs. Haydon’s house. Lena would have liked
much better to spend her Sundays with the girls she always sat with, and who often
asked her, and who teased her and made a gentle stir within her, but it never came
to Lena’s unexpectant and unsuffering german nature to do something different from
what was expected of her, just because she would like it that way better. Mrs. Haydon
had said that Lena was to come to her house every other Sunday, and so Lena always
went there.
Mrs. Haydon was the only one of her family who took any interest in Lena.
Mr. Haydon did not think much of her. She was his wife’s cousin and he was good
toherbutshewasforhimstupid,andalittlesimple,andverydull,andsuresomeday
to need help and to be in trouble. All young poor relations, who were brought from
Germany to Bridgepoint were sure, before long, to need help and to be in trouble.
The little Haydon boy was always very nasty to her. He was a hard child for
any one to manage, and his mother spoiled him very badly. Mrs. Haydon’s daughters
as they grew older did not learn to like Lena any better. Lena never knew that she
did not like them either. She did not know that she was only happy with the other
quicker girls, she always sat with in the park, and who laughed at her and always
teased her.
Mathilda Haydon, the simple, fat, blonde, older daughter felt very badly that she
had to say that this was her cousin Lena, this Lena who was little better for her
than a nigger. Mathilda was an overgrown, slow, flabby, blonde, stupid, fat girl, just
beginning as a woman; thick in her speech and dull and simple in her mind, and very
jealous of all her family and of other girls, and proud that she could have good dresses
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and new hats and learn music, and hating very badly to have a cousin who was a com-
mon servant. And then Mathilda remembered very strongly that dirty nasty place
that Lena came from and that Mathilda had so turned up her nose at, and where she
had been made so angry because her mother scolded her and liked all those rough
cow-smelly people.
Then, too, Mathilda would get very mad when her mother had Lena at their
parties, and when she talked about how good Lena was, to certain german mothers
in whose sons, perhaps, Mrs. Haydon might find Lena a good husband. All this would
make the dull, blonde, fat Mathilda very angry. Sometimes she would get so angry
that she would, in her thick, slow way, and with jealous anger blazing in her light
blue eyes, tell her mother that she did not see how she could like that nasty Lena;
and then her mother would scold Mathilda, and tell her that she knew her cousin
Lena was poor and Mathilda must be good to poor people.
Mathilda Haydon did not like relations to be poor. She told all her girl friends
what she thought of Lena, and so the girls would never talk to Lena at Mrs. Haydon’s
parties. But Lena in her unsuffering and unexpectant patience never really knew that
she was slighted. When Mathilda was with her girls in the street or in the park and
would see Lena, she always turned up her nose and barely nodded to her, and then
she would tell her friends how funny her mother was to take care of people like
that Lena, and how, back in Germany, all Lena’s people lived just like pigs.
The younger daughter, the dark, large, but not fat, Bertha Haydon, who was very
quick in her mind, and in her ways, and who was the favorite with her father, did not
like Lena, either. She did not like her because for her Lena was a fool and so stu-
pid, and she would let those Irish and Italian girls laugh at her and tease her, and
everybody always made fun of Lena, and Lena never got mad, or even had sense
enough to know that they were all making an awful fool of her.
Bertha Haydon hated people to be fools. Her father, too, thought Lena was a
fool, and so neither the father nor the daughter ever paid any attention to Lena,
although she came to their house every other Sunday.
Lena did not know how all the Haydons felt. She came to her aunt’s house
all her Sunday afternoons that she had out, because Mrs. Haydon had told her
she must do so. In the same way Lena always saved all of her wages. She never
thought of any way to spend it. The german cook, the good woman who always
scolded Lena, helped her to put it in the bank each month, as soon as she got it.
Sometimesbeforeitgotintothebanktobetakencareof,somebodywouldaskLena
forit.ThelittleHaydonboysometimesaskedandwouldgetit,andsometimessome
of the girls, the ones Lena always sat with, needed some more money; but the ger-
man cook, who always scolded Lena, saw to it that this did not happen very often.
WhenitdidhappenshewouldscoldLenaverysharply,andforthenextfewmonths
she would not let Lena touch her wages, but put it in the bank for her on the same
day that Lena got it.
So Lena always saved her wages, for she never thought to spend them, and she
always went to her aunt’s house for her Sundays because she did not know that she
could do anything different.
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Mrs. Haydon felt more and more every year that she had done right to bring
Lena back with her, for it was all coming out just as she had expected. Lena was good
and never wanted her own way, she was learning English, and saving all her wages,
and soon Mrs. Haydon would get her a good husband.
All these four years Mrs. Haydon was busy looking around among all the ger-
man people that she knew for the right man to be Lena’s husband, and now at last
she was quite decided.
The man Mrs. Haydon wanted for Lena was a young german-american tailor,
who worked with his father. He was good and all the family were very saving, and
Mrs. Haydon was sure that this would be just right for Lena, and then too, this young
tailor always did whatever his father and his mother wanted.
This old german tailor and his wife, the father and the mother of Herman
Kreder, who was to marry Lena Mainz, were very thrifty, careful people. Herman
was the only child they had left with them, and he always did everything they
wanted. Herman was now twenty-eight years old, but he had never stopped being
scolded and directed by his father and his mother. And now they wanted to see him
married.
Herman Kreder did not care much to get married. He was a gentle soul and a lit-
tle fearful. He had a sullen temper, too. He was obedient to his father and his mother.
He always did his work well. He often went out on Saturday nights and on Sundays,
with other men. He liked it with them but he never became really joyous. He liked
to be with men and he hated to have women with them. He was obedient to his
mother, but he did not care much to get married.
Mrs. Haydon and the elder Kreders had often talked the marriage over. They all
three liked it very well. Lena would do anything that Mrs. Haydon wanted, and
Herman was always obedient in everything to his father and his mother. Both Lena
and Herman were saving and good workers and neither of them ever wanted their
own way.
The elder Kreders, everybody knew, had saved up all their money, and they were
hard, good german people, and Mrs. Haydon was sure that with these people Lena
would never be in any trouble. Mr. Haydon would not say anything about it. He knew
old Kreder had a lot of money and owned some good houses, and he did not care what
his wife did with that simple, stupid Lena, so long as she would be sure never to need
help or to be in trouble.
Lena did not care much to get married. She liked her life very well where she
was working. She did not think much about Herman Kreder. She thought he was a
good man and she always found him very quiet. Neither of them ever spoke much to
the other. Lena did not care much just then about getting married.
Mrs. Haydon spoke to Lena about it very often. Lena never answered anything
at all. Mrs. Haydon thought, perhaps Lena did not like Herman Kreder. Mrs. Haydon
could not believe that any girl not even Lena, really had no feeling about getting
married.
Mrs. Haydon spoke to Lena very often about Herman. Mrs. Haydon sometimes
got very angry with Lena. She was afraid that Lena, for once, was going to be stubborn,
now when it was all fixed right for her to be married.
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“Why you stand there so stupid, why don’t you answer, Lena,” said Mrs. Haydon
one Sunday, at the end of a long talking that she was giving Lena about Herman
Kreder, and about Lena’s getting married to him.
“Yes ma’am,” said Lena, and then Mrs. Haydon was furious with this stupid Lena.
“Why don’t you answer with some sense, Lena, when I ask you if you don’t like
Herman Kreder. You stand there so stupid and don’t answer just like you ain’t heard
a word what I been saying to you. I never see anybody like you, Lena. If you going
to burst out at all, why don’t you burst out sudden instead of standing there so silly
and don’t answer. And here I am so good to you, and find you a good husband so you
can have a place to live in all your own. Answer me, Lena, don’t you like Herman
Kreder? He is a fine young fellow, almost too good for you, Lena, when you stand
there so stupid and don’t make no answer. There ain’t many poor girls that get the
chance you got now to get married.”
“Why, I do anything you say, Aunt Mathilda. Yes. I like him. He don’t say much
to me, but I guess he is a good man, and I do anything you say for me to do.”
“Well then Lena, why you stand there so silly all the time and not answer when
I asked you.”
“I didn’t hear you say you wanted I should say anything to you. I didn’t know you
wanted me to say nothing. I do whatever you tell me it’s right for me to do. I marry
Herman Kreder, if you want me.”
And so for Lena Mainz the match was made.
Old Mrs. Kreder did not discuss the matter with her Herman. She never thought
that she needed to talk such things over with him. She just told him about getting
married to Lena Mainz who was a good worker and very saving and never wanted her
own way, and Herman made his usual little grunt in answer to her.
Mrs. Kreder and Mrs. Haydon fixed the day and made all the arrangements for
the wedding and invited everybody who ought to be there to see them married.
In three months Lena Mainz and Herman Kreder were to be married.
Mrs. Haydon attended to Lena’s getting all the things that she needed. Lena had
to help a good deal with the sewing. Lena did not sew very well. Mrs. Haydon scolded
because Lena did not do it better, but then she was very good to Lena, and she hired
a girl to come and help her. Lena still stayed on with her pleasant mistress, but she
spent all her evenings and her Sundays with her aunt and all the sewing.
Mrs. Haydon got Lena some nice dresses. Lena liked that very well. Lena liked
having new hats even better, and Mrs. Haydon had some made for her by a real
milliner who made them very pretty.
Lena was nervous these days, but she did not think much about getting married.
She did not know really what it was, that, which was always coming nearer.
Lena liked the place where she was with the pleasant mistress and the good cook,
who always scolded, and she liked the girls she always sat with. She did not ask if she
would like being married any better. She always did whatever her aunt said and
expected, but she was always nervous when she saw the Kreders with their Herman.
She was excited and she liked her new hats, and everybody teased her and every
day her marrying was coming nearer, and yet she did not really know what it was, this
that was about to happen to her.
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Herman Kreder knew more what it meant to be married and he did not like it
very well. He did not like to see girls and he did not want to have to have one always
near him. Herman always did everything that his father and his mother wanted
and now they wanted that he should be married.
Herman had a sullen temper; he was gentle and he never said much. He liked
to go out with other men, but he never wanted that there should be any women
with them. The men all teased him about getting married. Herman did not mind
the teasing but he did not like very well the getting married and having a girl always
with him.
Three days before the wedding day, Herman went away to the country to be gone
over Sunday. He and Lena were to be married Tuesday afternoon. When the day came
Herman had not been seen or heard from.
The old Kreder couple had not worried much about it. Herman always did every-
thing they wanted and he would surely come back in time to get married. But when
Monday night came, and there was no Herman, they went to Mrs. Haydon to tell
her what had happened.
Mrs. Haydon got very much excited. It was hard enough to work so as to get
everything all ready, and then to have that silly Herman go off that way, so no one
could tell what was going to happen. Here was Lena and everything all ready, and
now they would have to make the wedding later so that they would know that Herman
would be sure to be there.
Mrs. Haydon was very much excited, and then she could not say much to the
old Kreder couple. She did not want to make them angry, for she wanted very badly
now that Lena should be married to their Herman.
At last it was decided that the wedding should be put off a week longer. Old Mr.
Kreder would go to New York to find Herman, for it was very likely that Herman had
gone there to his married sister.
Mrs. Haydon sent word around, about waiting until a week from that Tuesday,
to everybody that had been invited, and then Tuesday morning she sent for Lena
to come down to see her.
Mrs. Haydon was very angry with poor Lena when she saw her. She scolded
her hard because she was so foolish, and now Herman had gone off and nobody
could tell where he had gone to, and all because Lena always was so dumb and
silly. And Mrs. Haydon was just like a mother to her, and Lena always stood there
so stupid and did not answer what anybody asked her, and Herman was so silly
too, and now his father had to go and find him. Mrs. Haydon did not think that
any old people should be good to their children. Their children always were so
thankless, and never paid any attention, and older people were always doing things
for their good. Did Lena think it gave Mrs. Haydon any pleasure, to work so hard
to make Lena happy, and get her a good husband, and then Lena was so thankless
and never did anything that anybody wanted. It was a lesson to poor Mrs. Haydon
not to do things any more for anybody. Let everybody take care of themselves and
never come to her with any troubles; she knew better now than to meddle to make
other people happy. It just made trouble for her and her husband did not like it.
He always said she was too good, and nobody ever thanked her for it, and there
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Lena was always standing stupid and not answering anything anybody wanted.
Lena could always talk enough to those silly girls she liked so much, and always
sat with, but who never did anything for her except to take away her money,
and here was her aunt who tried so hard and was so good to her and treated her
just like one of her own children and Lena stood there, and never made any answer
and never tried to please her aunt, or to do anything that her aunt wanted. “No,
it ain’t no use your standin’ there and cryin’, now, Lena. Its too late now to care
about that Herman. You should have cared some before, and then you wouldn’t
have to stand and cry now, and be a disappointment to me, and then I get scolded
by my husband for taking care of everybody, and nobody ever thankful. I am glad
you got the sense to feel sorry now, Lena, anyway, and I try to do what I can to
help you out in your trouble, only you don’t deserve to have anybody take any
trouble for you. But perhaps you know better next time. You go home now and
take care you don’t spoil your clothes and that new hat, you had no business to be
wearin’ that this morning, but you ain’t got no sense at all, Lena. I never in my
life see anybody be so stupid.”
Mrs. Haydon stopped and poor Lena stood there in her hat, all trimmed with
pretty flowers, and the tears coming out of her eyes, and Lena did not know what it
was that she had done, only she was not going to be married and it was a disgrace
for a girl to be left by a man on the very day she was to be married.
Lena went home all alone, and cried in the street car.
Poor Lena cried very hard all alone in the street car. She almost spoiled her new
hat with her hitting it against the window in her crying. Then she remembered
that she must not do so.
The conductor was a kind man and he was very sorry when he saw her crying.
“Don’t feel so bad, you get another feller, you are such a nice girl,” he said to make
her cheerful. “But Aunt Mathilda said now, I never get married,” poor Lena sobbed
out for her answer. “Why you really got trouble like that,” said the conductor, “I
just said that now to josh you. I didn’t ever think you really was left by a feller. He
must be a stupid feller. But don’t you worry, he wasn’t much good if he could go away
and leave you, lookin’ to be such a nice girl. You just tell all your trouble to me,
and I help you.” The car was empty and the conductor sat down beside her to put
his arm around her, and to be a comfort to her. Lena suddenly remembered where
she was, and if she did things like that her aunt would scold her. She moved away
from the man into the corner. He laughed, “Don’t be scared,” he said, “I wasn’t going
to hurt you. But you just keep up your spirit. You are a real nice girl, and you’ll be sure
to get a real good husband. Don’t you let nobody fool you. You’re all right and I don’t
want to scare you.”
The conductor went back to his platform to help a passenger get on the car.
All the time Lena stayed in the street car, he would come in every little while and
reassure her, about her not to feel so bad about a man who hadn’t no more sense than
to go away and leave her. She’d be sure yet to get a good man, she needn’t be so wor-
ried, he frequently assured her.
He chatted with the other passenger who had just come in, a very well dressed
old man, and then with another who came in later, a good sort of a working man,
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and then another who came in, a nice lady, and he told them all about Lena’s hav-
ing trouble, and it was too bad there were men who treated a poor girl so badly.
And everybody in the car was sorry for poor Lena and the workman tried to cheer
her, and the old man looked sharply at her, and said she looked like a good girl, but
she ought to be more careful and not to be so careless, and things like that would not
happen to her, and the nice lady went and sat beside her and Lena liked it, though
she shrank away from being near her.
So Lena was feeling a little better when she got off the car, and the conductor
helped her, and he called out to her, “You be sure you keep up a good heart now.
He wasn’t no good that feller and you were lucky for to lose him. You’ll get a real man
yet, one that will be better for you. Don’t you be worried, you’re a real nice girl as I
ever see in such trouble,” and the conductor shook his head and went back into his
car to talk it over with the other passengers he had there.
The german cook, who always scolded Lena, was very angry when she heard the
story. She never did think Mrs. Haydon would do so much for Lena, though she
was always talking so grand about what she could do for everybody. The good ger-
man cook always had been a little distrustful of her. People who always thought they
were so much never did really do things right for anybody. Not that Mrs. Haydon
wasn’t a good woman. Mrs. Haydon was a real, good, german woman, and she did
really mean to do well by her niece Lena. The cook knew that very well, and she
had always said so, and she always had liked and respected Mrs. Haydon, who always
acted very proper to her, and Lena was so backward. When there was a man to talk
to, Mrs. Haydon did have hard work when she tried to marry Lena. Mrs. Haydon was
a good woman, only she did talk sometimes too grand. Perhaps this trouble would
make her see it wasn’t always so easy to do, to make everybody do everything just like
she wanted. The cook was very sorry now for Mrs. Haydon. All this must be such a
disappointment, and such a worry to her, and she really had always been very good
to Lena. But Lena had better go and put on her other clothes and stop with all that
crying. That wouldn’t do nothing now to help her, and if Lena would be a good
girl, and just be real patient, her aunt would make it all come out right yet for her.
“I just tell Mrs. Aldrich, Lena, you stay here yet a little longer. You know she is always
so good to you, Lena, and I know she let you, and I tell her all about that stupid
Herman Kreder. I got no patience, Lena, with anybody who can be so stupid. You just
stop now with your crying, Lena, and take off them good clothes and put them away
so you don’t spoil them when you need them, and you can help me with the dishes
and everything will come off better for you. You see if I ain’t right by what I tell
you. You just stop crying now Lena quick, or else I scold you.”
Lena still choked a little and was very miserable inside her but she did every-
thing just as the cook told her.
ThegirlsLenaalwayssatwithwereverysorrytoseeherlooksosadwithhertrou-
ble. Mary the Irish girl sometimes got very angry with her. Mary was always very hot
whenshetalkedofLena’sauntMathilda,whothoughtshewassogrand,andhadsuch
stupid,stuckupdaughters.Marywouldn’tbeafatfoollikethatuglytemperedMathilda
Haydon,notforanythinganybodycouldevergiveher.HowLenacouldkeepongoing
there so much when they all always acted as if she was just dirt to them, Mary never
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couldsee.ButLenaneverhadanysenseofhowsheshouldmakepeoplestandround
for her, and that was always all the trouble with her. And poor Lena, she was so stu-
pid to be sorry for losing that gawky fool who didn’t ever know what he wanted and
just said “ja” to his mamma and his papa, like a baby, and was scared to look at a girl
straight, and then sneaked away the last day like as if somebody was going to do
somethingtohim.Disgrace,Lenatalkingaboutdisgrace!Itwasadisgraceforagirlto
be seen with the likes of him, let alone to be married to him. But that poor Lena,
she never did know how to show herself off for what she was really. Disgrace to have
himgoawayandleaveher.Marywouldjustliketogetachancetoshowhim.IfLena
wasn’t worth fifteen like Herman Kreder, Mary would just eat her own head all up.
ItwasagoodriddanceLenahadofthatHermanKrederandhisstingy,dirtyparents,
and if Lena didn’t stop crying about it,—Mary would just naturally despise her.
Poor Lena, she knew very well how Mary meant it all, this she was always say-
ing to her. But Lena was very miserable inside her. She felt the disgrace it was for a
decent german girl that a man should go away and leave her. Lena knew very well
that her aunt was right when she said the way Herman had acted to her was a dis-
grace to everyone that knew her. Mary and Nellie and the other girls she always sat
with were always very good to Lena but that did not make her trouble any better. It
was a disgrace the way Lena had been left, to any decent family, and that could never
be made any different to her.
And so the slow days wore on, and Lena never saw her Aunt Mathilda. At laston
Sunday she got word by a boy to go and see her aunt Mathilda. Lena’s heart beat quick
for she was very nervous now with all this that had happened to her. She went just
as quickly as she could to see her Aunt Mathilda.
Mrs. Haydon quick, as soon as she saw Lena, began to scold her for keeping
her aunt waiting so long for her, and for not coming in all the week to see her, to
see if her aunt should need her, and so her aunt had to send a boy to tell her. But it
was easy, even for Lena, to see that her aunt was not really angry with her. It wasn’t
Lena’s fault, went on Mrs. Haydon, that everything was going to happen all right for
her. Mrs. Haydon was very tired taking all this trouble for her, and when Lena couldn’t
even take trouble to come and see her aunt, to see if she needed anything to tell
her. But Mrs. Haydon really never minded things like that when she could do things
for anybody. She was tired now, all the trouble she had been taking to make things
right for Lena, but perhaps now Lena heard it she would learn a little to be thank-
ful to her. “You get all ready to be married Tuesday Lena, you hear me,” said
Mrs.Haydon to her. “You come here Tuesday morning and I have everything all ready
for you. You wear your new dress I got you, and your hat with all them flowers on
it, and you be very careful coming you don’t get your things all dirty, you so careless
all the time, Lena, and not thinking, and you act sometimes you never got no head
at all on you. You go home now, and you tell your Mrs. Aldrich that you leave her
Tuesday. Don’t you go forgetting now, Lena, anything I ever told you what you should
do to be careful. You be a good girl, now Lena. You get married Tuesday to Herman
Kreder.” And that was all Lena ever knew of what had happened all this week to
Herman Kreder. Lena forgot there was anything to know about it. She was really to
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be married Tuesday, and her Aunt Mathilda said she was a good girl, and now there
was no disgrace left upon her.
Lena now fell back into the way she always had of being always dreamy and
not there, the way she always had been, except for the few days she was so excited,
because she had been left by a man the very day she was to have been married. Lena
was a little nervous all these last days, but she did not think much about what it meant
for her to be married.
Herman Kreder was not so content about it. He was quiet and was sullen and he
knew he could not help it. He knew now he just had to let himself get married. It was
not that Herman did not like Lena Mainz. She was as good as any other girl could be
for him. She was a little better perhaps than other girls he saw, she was so very quiet,
but Herman did not like to always have to have a girl around him. Herman had always
done everything that his mother and his father wanted. His father had found him
in New York, where Herman had gone to be with his married sister.
Herman’s father when he had found him coaxed Herman a long time and went
on whole days with his complaining to him, always troubled but gentle and quite
patient with him, and always he was worrying to Herman about what was the right
way his boy Herman should always do, always whatever it was his mother ever wanted
from him, and always Herman never made him any answer.
Old Mr. Kreder kept on saying to him, he did not see how Herman could think
now, it could be any different. When you make a bargain you just got to stick right
to it, that was the only way old Mr. Kreder could ever see it, and saying you would
get married to a girl and she got everything all ready, that was a bargain just like
one you make in business and Herman he had made it, and now Herman he would
just have to do it, old Mr. Kreder didn’t see there was any other way a good boy like
his Herman had, to do it. And then too that Lena Mainz was such a nice girl and
Herman hadn’t ought to really give his father so much trouble and make him pay out
all that money, to come all the way to New York just to find him, and they both
lose all that time from their working, when all Herman had to do was just to stand
up, for an hour, and then he would be all right married, and it would be all over for
him, and then everything at home would never be any different to him.
And his father went on; there was his poor mother saying always how her Herman
always did everything before she ever wanted, and now just because he got notions
in him, and wanted to show people how he could be stubborn, he was making all this
trouble for her, and making them pay all that money just to run around and find him.
“You got no idea Herman, how bad mama is feeling about the way you been acting
Herman,” said old Mr. Kreder to him. “She says she never can understand how you
can be so thankless Herman. It hurts her very much you been so stubborn, and she
find you such a nice girl for you, like Lena Mainz who is always just so quiet and always
saves up all her wages, and she never wanting her own way at all like some girls are
always all the time to have it, and your mama trying so hard, just so you could becom-
fortable Herman to be married, and then you act so stubborn Herman. You like all
young people Herman, you think only about yourself, and what you are just wanting,
and your mama she is thinking only what is good for you to have, for you in the future.
Do you think your mama wants to have a girl around to be a bother, for herself,
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Herman. It’s just for you Herman she is always thinking, and she talks always about
how happy she will be, when she sees her Herman married to a nice girl, and then
when she fixed it all up so good for you, so it never would be any bother to you,
just the way she wanted you should like it, and you say yes all right, I do it, and
then you go away like this and act stubborn, and make all this trouble everybody to
take for you, and we spend money, and I got to travel all round to find you. You come
home now with me Herman and get married, and I tell your mama she better not say
anything to you about how much it cost me to come all the way to look for you—
Hey Herman,” said his father coaxing, “Hey, you come home now and get married.
All you got to do Herman is just to stand up for an hour Herman, and then you don’t
never to have any more bother to it—Hey Herman!—you come home with me to-
morrow and get married. Hey Herman.”
Herman’s married sister liked her brother Herman, and she had always tried to
help him, when there was anything she knew he wanted. She liked it that he was
so good and always did everything that their father and their mother wanted, but still
she wished it could be that he could have more his own way, if there was anything
he ever wanted.
But now she thought Herman with his girl was very funny. She wanted that
Herman should be married. She thought it would do him lots of good to get married.
She laughed at Herman when she heard the story. Until his father came to find him,
she did not know why it was Herman had come just then to New York to see her.
When she heard the story she laughed a good deal at her brother Herman and teased
him a good deal about his running away, because he didn’t want to have a girl to be
all the time around him.
Herman’s married sister liked her brother Herman, and she did not want him
not to like to be with women. He was good, her brother Herman, and it would surely
do him good to get married. It would make him stand up for himself stronger.
Herman’ssister always laughed at him and always she would try to reassure him. “Such
a nice man as my brother Herman acting like as if he was afraid of women. Why
the girls all like a man like you Herman, if you didn’t always run away when you
saw them. It do you good really Herman to get married, and then you got some-
body you can boss around when you want to. It do you good Herman to get mar-
ried, you see if you don’t like it, when you really done it. You go along home now with
papa, Herman and get married to that Lena. You don’t know how nice you like it
Herman when you try once how you can do it. You just don’t be afraid of nothing,
Herman. You good enough for any girl to marry, Herman. Any girl be glad to have
a man like you to be always with them Herman. You just go along home with papa
and try it what I say, Herman. Oh you so funny Herman, when you sit there, and then
run away and leave your girl behind you. I know she is crying like anything Herman
for to lose you. Don’t be bad to her Herman. You go along home with papa now
and get married Herman. I’d be awful ashamed Herman, to really have a brother
didn’t have spirit enough to get married, when a girl is just dying for to have him.
You always like me to be with you Herman. I don’t see why you say you don’t want
a girl to be all the time around you. You always been good to me Herman, and I know
you always be good to that Lena, and you soon feel just like as if she had always been
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there with you. Don’t act like as if you wasn’t a nice strong man, Herman. Really I
laugh at you Herman, but you know I like awful well to see you real happy. You go
home and get married to that Lena, Herman. She is a real pretty girl and real nice
and good and quiet and she make my brother Herman very happy. You just stop your
fussing now with Herman, papa. He go with you to-morrow papa, and you see he like
it so much to be married, he make everybody laugh just to see him be so happy. Really
truly, that’s the way it will be with you Herman. You just listen to me what I tell
you Herman.” And so his sister laughed at him and reassured him, and his father kept
on telling what the mother always said about her Herman, and he coaxed him and
Herman never said anything in answer, and his sister packed his things up and was
very cheerful with him, and she kissed him, and then she laughed and then she kissed
him, and his father went and bought the tickets for the train, and at last late on
Sunday he brought Herman back to Bridgepoint with him.
It was always very hard to keep Mrs. Kreder from saying what she thought, to
her Herman, but her daughter had written her a letter, so as to warn her not to say
anything about what he had been doing, to him, and her husband came in with
Herman and said, “Here we are come home mama, Herman and me, and we are very
tired it was so crowded coming,” and then he whispered to her. “You be good to
Herman, mama, he didn’t mean to make us so much trouble,” and so old Mrs. Kreder,
held in what she felt was so strong in her to say to her Herman. She just said very
stiffly to him, “I’m glad to see you come home to-day, Herman.” Then she went to
arrange it all with Mrs. Haydon.
Herman was now again just like he always had been, sullen and very good, and
very quiet, and always ready to do whatever his mother and his father wanted. Tuesday
morning came, Herman got his new clothes on and went with his father and his
mother to stand up for an hour and get married. Lena was there in her new dress, and
her hat with all the pretty flowers, and she was very nervous for now she knew
she was really very soon to be married. Mrs. Haydon had everything all ready.
Everybody was there just as they should be and very soon Herman Kreder and Lena
Mainz were married.
When everything was really over, they went back to the Kreder house together.
They were all now to live together, Lena and Herman and the old father and the old
mother, in the house where Mr. Kreder had worked so many years as a tailor, with his
son Herman always there to help him.
Irish Mary had often said to Lena she never did see how Lena could ever want
to have anything to do with Herman Kreder and his dirty stingy parents. The old
Kreders were to an Irish nature, a stingy, dirty couple. They had not the free-hearted,
thoughtless, fighting, mud bespattered, ragged, peat-smoked cabin dirt that irish
Mary knew and could forgive and love. Theirs was the german dirt of saving, of
being dowdy and loose and foul in your clothes so as to save them and yourself in
washing, having your hair greasy to save it in the soap and drying, having your
clothes dirty, not in freedom, but because so it was cheaper, keeping the house close
and smelly because so it cost less to get it heated, living so poorly not only so as
to save money but so they should never even know themselves that they had it,
working all the time not only because from their nature they just had to and because
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it made them money but also that they never could be put in any way to make them
spend their money.
This was the place Lena now had for her home and to her it was very different
than it could be for an irish Mary. She too was german and was thrifty, though she
was always so dreamy and not there. Lena was always careful with things and she
always saved her money, for that was the only way she knew how to do it. She never
had taken care of her own money and she never had thought how to use it.
Lena Mainz had been, before she was Mrs. Herman Kreder, always clean and
decent in her clothes and in her person, but it was not because she ever thought about
it or really needed so to have it, it was the way her people did in the german coun-
try where she came from, and her Aunt Mathilda and the good german cook who
always scolded, had kept her on and made her, with their scoldings, always more care-
ful to keep clean and to wash real often. But there was no deep need in all this for
Lena and so, though Lena did not like the old Kreders, though she really did not
know that, she did not think about their being stingy dirty people.
Herman Kreder was cleaner than the old people, just because it was his nature
to keep cleaner, but he was used to his mother and his father, and he never thought
that they should keep things cleaner. And Herman too always saved all his money,
except for that little beer he drank when he went out with other men of an evening
the way he always liked to do it, and he never thought of any other way to spend
it. His father had always kept all the money for them and he always was doing busi-
ness with it. And then too Herman really had no money, for he always had worked
for his father, and his father had never thought to pay him.
And so they began all four to live in the Kreder house together, and Lena began
soon with it to look careless and a little dirty, and to be more lifeless with it, and
nobody ever noticed much what Lena wanted, and she never really knew herself what
she needed.
The only real trouble that came to Lena with their living all four there together,
was the way old Mrs. Kreder scolded. Lena had always been used to being scolded,
but this scolding of old Mrs. Kreder was very different from the way she ever before
had had to endure it.
Herman, now he was married to her, really liked Lena very well. He did not care
very much about her but she never was a bother to him being there around him, only
when his mother worried and was nasty to them because Lena was so careless, and
did not know how to save things right for them with their eating, and all the other
ways with money, that the old woman had to save it.
Herman Kreder had always done everything his mother and his father wanted
but he did not really love his parents very deeply. With Herman it was always only
that he hated to have any struggle. It was all always all right with him when he could
just go along and do the same thing over every day with his working, and not to hear
things, and not to have people make him listen to their anger. And now his marriage,
and he just knew it would, was making trouble for him. It made him hear more
what his mother was always saying, with her scolding. He had to really hear it now
because Lena was there, and she was so scared and dull always when she heard it.
Herman knew very well with his mother, it was all right if one ate very little and
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worked hard all day and did not hear her when she scolded, the way Herman always
had done before they were so foolish about his getting married and having a girl there
to be all the time around him, and now he had to help her so the girl could learn too,
not to hear it when his mother scolded, and not to look so scared, and not to eat
much, and always to be sure to save it.
Herman really did not know very well what he could do to help Lena to under-
stand it. He could never answer his mother back to help Lena, that never would make
things any better for her, and he never could feel in himself any way to comfort Lena,
to make her strong not to hear his mother, in all the awful ways she always scolded.
It just worried Herman to have it like that all the time around him. Herman did
not know much about how a man could make a struggle with a mother, to do much
to keep her quiet, and indeed Herman never knew much how to make a struggle
against anyone who really wanted to have anything very badly. Herman all his
life never wanted anything so badly, that he would really make a struggle against any
one to get it. Herman all his life only wanted to live regular and quiet, and not talk
much and to do the same way every day like every other with his working. And
now his mother had made him get married to this Lena and now with his mother
making all that scolding, he had all this trouble and this worry always on him.
Mrs. Haydon did not see Lena now very often. She had not lost her interest in
her niece Lena, but Lena could not come much to her house to see her, it would
not be right, now Lena was a married woman. And then too Mrs. Haydon had her
hands full just then with her two daughters, for she was getting them ready to find
them good husbands, and then too her own husband now worried her very often
about her always spoiling that boy of hers, so he would be sure to turn out no good
and be a disgrace to a german family, and all because his mother always spoiled him.
All these things were very worrying now to Mrs. Haydon, but still she wanted to be
good to Lena, though she could not see her very often. She only saw her when
Mrs. Haydon went to call on Mrs. Kreder or when Mrs. Kreder came to see Mrs.
Haydon, and that never could be very often. Then too these days Mrs. Haydon could
not scold Lena, Mrs. Kreder was always there with her, and it would not be right to
scold Lena when Mrs. Kreder was there, who had now the real right to do it. And
so her aunt always said nice things now to Lena, and though Mrs. Haydon sometimes
was a little worried when she saw Lena looking sad and not careful, she did not have
time just then to really worry much about it.
Lena now never any more saw the girls she always used to sit with. She had no
way now to see them and it was not in Lena’s nature to search out ways to see them,
nor did she now ever think much of the days when she had been used to see them.
They never any of them had come to the Kreder house to see her. Not even Irish
Mary had ever thought to come to see her. Lena had been soon forgotten by them.
They had soon passed away from Lena and now Lena never thought any more that
she had ever known them.
The only one of her old friends who tried to know what Lena liked and what she
needed, and who always made Lena come to see her, was the good german cook who
had always scolded. She now scolded Lena hard for letting herself go so, and going
out when she was looking so untidy. “I know you going to have a baby Lena, but that’s
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no way for you to be looking. I am ashamed most to see you come and sit here in
my kitchen, looking so sloppy and like you never used to Lena. I never see anybody
like you Lena. Herman is very good to you, you always say so, and he don’t treat
you bad even though you don’t deserve to have anybody good to you, you so careless
all the time, Lena, letting yourself go like you never had anybody tell you what was
the right way you should know how to be looking. No, Lena, I don’t see no reason
you should let yourself go so and look so untidy Lena, so I am ashamed to see you
sit there looking so ugly, Lena. No Lena that ain’t no way ever I see a woman make
things come out better, letting herself go so every way and crying all the time like
as if you had real trouble. I never wanted to see you marry Herman Kreder, Lena, I
knew what you got to stand with that old woman always, and that old man, he is
so stingy too and he don’t say things out but he ain’t any better in his heart than
his wife with her bad ways, I know that Lena, I know they don’t hardly give you
enough to eat, Lena, I am real sorry for you Lena, you know that Lena, but that
ain’t any way to be going round so untidy Lena, even if you have got all that trouble.
You never see me do like that Lena, though sometimes I got a headache so I can’t see
to stand to be working hardly, and nothing comes right with all my cooking, but I
always see Lena, I look decent. That’s the only way a german girl can make things
come out right Lena. You hear me what I am saying to you Lena. Now you eat some-
thing nice Lena, I got it all ready for you, and you wash up and be careful Lena and
the baby will come all right to you, and then I make your Aunt Mathilda see that
you live in a house soon all alone with Herman and your baby, and then everything
go better for you. You hear me what I say to you Lena. Now don’t let me ever see you
come looking like this any more Lena, and you just stop with that always crying. You
ain’t got no reason to be sitting there now with all that crying, I never see anybody
have trouble it did them any good to do the way you are doing, Lena. You hear me
Lena. You go home now and you be good the way I tell you Lena, and I see what I
can do. I make your Aunt Mathilda make old Mrs. Kreder let you be till you get your
baby all right. Now don’t you be scared and so silly Lena. I don’t like to see you act
so Lena when really you got a nice man and so many things really any girl should
be grateful to be having. Now you go home Lena to-day and you do the way I say,
to you, and I see what I can do to help you.”
“Yes Mrs. Aldrich” said the good german woman to her mistress later, “Yes
Mrs. Aldrich that’s the way it is with them girls when they want so to get married.
They don’t know when they got it good Mrs. Aldrich. They never know what it is
they’re really wanting when they got it, Mrs. Aldrich. There’s that poor Lena,
she just been here crying and looking so careless so I scold her, but that was no
good that marrying for that poor Lena, Mrs. Aldrich. She do look so pale and sad
now Mrs. Aldrich, it just break my heart to see her. She was a good girl was Lena,
Mrs. Aldrich, and I never had no trouble with her like I got with so many young
girls nowadays, Mrs. Aldrich, and I never see any girl any better to work right than
our Lena, and now she got to stand it all the time with that old woman Mrs. Kreder.
My! Mrs. Aldrich, she is a bad old woman to her. I never see Mrs. Aldrich how old
people can be so bad to young girls and not have no kind of patience with them. If
Lena could only live with her Herman, he ain’t so bad the way men are, Mrs. Aldrich,
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but he is just the way always his mother wants him, he ain’t got no spirit in him, and
so I don’t really see no help for that poor Lena. I know her aunt, Mrs. Haydon, meant
it all right for her Mrs. Aldrich, but poor Lena, it would be better for her if her Herman
had stayed there in New York that time he went away to leave her. I don’t like it
the way Lena is looking now, Mrs. Aldrich. She looks like as if she don’t have no life
left in her hardly, Mrs. Aldrich, she just drags around and looks so dirty and after
all the pains I always took to teach her and to keep her nice in her ways and looking.
It don’t do no good to them, for them girls to get married Mrs. Aldrich, they are much
better when they only know it, to stay in a good place when they got it, and keep
on regular with their working. I don’t like it the way Lena looks now Mrs. Aldrich.
I wish I knew some way to help that poor Lena, Mrs. Aldrich, but she is a bad old
woman, that old Mrs. Kreder, Herman’s mother. I speak to Mrs. Haydon real soon,
Mrs. Aldrich. I see what we can do now to help that poor Lena.”
These were really bad days for poor Lena. Herman always was real good to her
and now he even sometimes tried to stop his mother from scolding Lena. “She ain’t
well now mama, you let her be now you hear me. You tell me what it is you want
she should be doing, I tell her. I see she does it right just the way you want it mama.
You let be, I say now mama, with that always scolding Lena. You let be, I say now,
you wait till she is feeling better.” Herman was getting really strong to struggle, for
he could see that Lena with that baby working hard inside her, really could not stand
it any longer with his mother and the awful ways she always scolded.
It was a new feeling Herman now had inside him that made him feel he was
strong to make a struggle. It was new for Herman Kreder really to be wanting some-
thing, but Herman wanted strongly now to be a father, and he wanted badly that
his baby should be a boy and healthy. Herman never had cared really very much about
his father and his mother, though always, all his life, he had done everything just as
they wanted, and he had never really cared much about his wife, Lena, though he
always had been very good to her, and had always tried to keep his mother off her,
with the awful way she always scolded, but to be really a father of a little baby, that
feeling took hold of Herman very deeply. He was almost ready, so as to save his
baby from all trouble, to really make a strong struggle with his mother and with his
father, too, if he would not help him to control his mother.
Sometimes Herman even went to Mrs. Haydon to talk all this trouble over. They
decided then together, it was better to wait there all four together for the baby, and
Herman could make Mrs. Kreder stop a little with her scolding, and then when Lena
was a little stronger, Herman should have his own house for her, next door to his
father, so he could always be there to help him in his working, but so they could
eat and sleep in a house where the old woman could not control them and they could
not hear her awful scolding.
And so things went on, the same way, a little longer. Poor Lena was not feel-
ing any joy to have a baby. She was scared the way she had been when she was so sick
on the water. She was scared now every time when anything would hurt her. She was
scared and still and lifeless, and sure that every minute she would die. Lena had no
power to be strong in this kind of trouble, she could only sit still and be scared, and
dull, and lifeless, and sure that every minute she would die.
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Before very long, Lena had her baby. He was a good, healthy little boy, the baby.
Herman cared very much to have the baby. When Lena was a little stronger he
took a house next door to the old couple, so he and his own family could eat and
sleep and do the way they wanted. This did not seem to make much change now
for Lena. She was just the same as when she was waiting with her baby. She just
dragged around and was careless with her clothes and all lifeless, and she acted always
and lived on just as if she had no feeling. She always did everything regular with
the work, the way she always had had to do it, but she never got back any spirit in
her. Herman was always good and kind, and always helped her with her working. He
did everything he knew to help her. He always did all the active new things in the
house and for the baby. Lena did what she had to do the way she always had been
taught it. She always just kept going now with her working, and she was always care-
less and dirty, and a little dazed, and lifeless. Lena never got any better in herself of
this way of being that she had had ever since she had been married.
Mrs. Haydon never saw any more of her niece, Lena. Mrs. Haydon had now so
much trouble with her own house, and her daughters getting married, and her boy,
who was growing up, and who always was getting so much worse to manage. She knew
she had done right by Lena. Herman Kreder was a good man, she would be glad to
get one so good, sometimes, for her own daughters, and now they had a home to live
in together, separate from the old people, who had made their trouble for them.
Mrs. Haydon felt she had done very well by her niece Lena, and she never thought
now she needed any more to go and see her. Lena would do very well now without
her aunt to trouble herself any more about her.
The good german cook who had always scolded, still tried to do her duty like a
mother to poor Lena. It was very hard now to do right by Lena. Lena never seemed
to hear now what anyone was saying to her. Herman was always doing everything he
could to help her. Herman always, when he was home, took good care of the baby.
Herman loved to take care of his baby. Lena never thought to take him out or to
do anything she didn’t have to.
The good cook sometimes made Lena come to see her. Lena would come with
her baby and sit there in the kitchen, and watch the good woman cooking, and lis-
ten to her sometimes a little, the way she used to, while the good german woman
scolded her for going around looking so careless when now she had no trouble, and
sitting there so dull, and always being just so thankless. Sometimes Lena would wake
up a little and get back into her face her old, gentle, patient, and unsuffering sweet-
ness, but mostly Lena did not seem to hear much when the good german woman
scolded. Lena always liked it when Mrs. Aldrich her good mistress spoke to her kindly,
and then Lena would seem to go back and feel herself to be like she was when she
had been in service. But mostly Lena just lived along and was careless in her clothes,
and dull, and lifeless.
By and by Lena had two more little babies. Lena was not so much scared now
when she had the babies. She did not seem to notice very much when they hurt
her, and she never seemed to feel very much now about anything that happened
to her.
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They were very nice babies, all these three that Lena had, and Herman took
good care of them always. Herman never really cared much about his wife, Lena. The
only things Herman ever really cared for were his babies. Herman always was very
good to his children. He always had a gentle, tender way when he held them. He
learned to be very handy with them. He spent all the time he was not working,
with them. By and by he began to work all day in his own home so that he could have
his children always in the same room with him.
Lena always was more and more lifeless and Herman now mostly never thought
about her. He more and more took all the care of their three children. He saw to their
eating right and their washing, and he dressed them every morning, and he taught
them the right way to do things, and he put them to their sleeping, and he was now
always every minute with them. Then there was to come to them, a fourth baby. Lena
went to the hospital near by to have the baby. Lena seemed to be going to have much
trouble with it. When the baby was come out at last, it was like its mother lifeless.
While it was coming, Lena had grown very pale and sicker. When it was all over Lena
had died, too, and nobody knew just how it had happened to her.
The good german cook who had always scolded Lena, and had always to the last
day tried to help her, was the only one who ever missed her. She remembered how
nice Lena had looked all the time she was in service with her, and how her voice had
been so gentle and sweet-sounding, and how she always was a good girl, and how she
never had to have any trouble with her, the way she always had with all the other
girls who had been taken into the house to help her. The good cook sometimes spoke
so of Lena when she had time to have a talk with Mrs. Aldrich, and this was all the
remembering there now ever was of Lena.
Herman Kreder now always lived very happy, very gentle, very quiet, very well
content alone with his three children. He never had a woman any more to be all the
time around him. He always did all his own work in his house, when he was through
every day with the work he was always doing for his father. Herman always was alone,
and he always worked alone, until his little ones were big enough to help him. Herman
Kreder was very well content now and he always lived very regular and peaceful, and
with every day just like the next one, always alone now with his three good, gentle
children.
1909
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