Page:The Making of Americans, 1925.djvu/18

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them to give us tickets, I remember we heard some one say our father's name, some man in the same room with us. We did not dare speak to the men near us and we did not know which man it was that knew us, but it made us feel a little better. Yes I say you youngsters have an easy time of it nowadays doing nothing. And that was all years ago and now everything is all very different with me. And my poor mother, peace be with her, she never had a big house and servants to work for her like your mother, and everything she ever wanted I could give her like your mother has now that I can buy it for her. No, my poor mother, peace be with her, it was very different for her. You are named after her Julia but you don't any of you children look much like her. Yes she was a good strong woman was my mother, peace be with her. No you don't any of you ever look much like her and she could do more than all her grandchildren ever can do now all put together. Yes she was a wonderful woman your grandmother, peace be with her. She took care of all us children, we were ten then, and she made our clothes and did her own washing and in between she made peppermint candy for the little ones to sell. She was a wonderful good woman your grandmother, not like you children who never will be good for anything. Yes! I say, I was only a little older than that lazy George here when my poor mother, peace be with her, died away, and we were left there, ten children, and we had to get along without her, and my father, he was an honest and a good man but he never knew much how to make a living, and so he never could help along any of his children. And so what we wanted we had to go out and find out how to get it. And now you children have it very different, you have everything you can ever think you can be needing, and you don't ever show that you can work hard to deserve it. Well you got your literary effect and your new fangled notions and all kinds of education and you all always explain to me how well you know how to do it, I say it will be soon now when I can see what all these new fangled notions and all your kinds of improvements will do for you. See if it can teach you more than we learned working hard and selling candy and anything else we could do to get some money. What, well alright, I say I am good and ready to sit still and watch you to see how you all do it. I am always waiting and if you are any good I will know it. I say I am always watching now to see," and then he went away and left them followed by shouts from them, "Alright sir, you just wait and see."

The young Dehnings had all been born and brought up in the town of Bridgepoint. Their mother too had been born in Bridgepoint. It was there that they had first landed, her father, a harsh man, hard to his wife and to his children but not very good with all his fierceness at knowing how to make a living, and her mother a good gentle wife who never left him, though surely he was not worthy to have her so faithful