Fanny Hersland all her life was a sweet gentle little woman. Not that she did not have a fierce little temper sometimes in her and one that could be very stubborn, but mostly she was a sweet little gentle mother woman and only would be hurt, not angry, when any bad thing happened to them.
Her mother was one of those four good foreign women the grandmothers, always old women or as little children to us the generation of grandchildren. These four good foreign women, the grandmothers we need only to be just remembering, had each one a different kind of a foreign man to be a master to them. These four foreign women, the one strong to bear many children and then always after strong to lead them, the steady good one who was patient to bear her many children and then always was patient to suffer with them, the sweet pure one who died as soon as she had born all of them for that was all she knew then to do for them, and the little gentle weeping hopeless one who sorrowed in her having them and always after sorrowed in them, all these four foreign women had very many and very different kinds of children.
The gentle little hopeless one who wept out all the sorrow for her children had many and very little children. She was the mother of the pretty gentle little woman that David Hersland married in Bridgepoint and took out to Gossols with him.
The little weary weeping mother of all these gentle cheery little children had a foreign husband who was not very pleasant to his children. He too was little like his wife and like all his children but there was a great deal in him to cause terror to his wife and children. He was like old David Hersland important in religion. It was very deep inside him and with him it was much harder on his children. His wife too had sorrow in religion, she had sorrow from his being so important in religion and she had sorrow too from her own self in her own religion. But then it was all sorrow and sadness, and always a trickling kind of weeping that she had every moment in her living, and it really was not much worse in religion. It was just a way she had, this trickling weeping, even as when it sometimes did happen she was laughing. She never ever really stopped her sad trickling, to her joy was as it has been said of laughing, it is madness, and of mirth who doeth it, for even in laughter the heart is sorrowful and the end of that mirth is heaviness. It was in her as it was said by the quaker woman. I often think if I could be so fixed as never to laugh or to smile I should be one step better, it fills me with sorrow when I see people so full of laugh.
It was a hard father and a dreary mother that gave the world so many and such pleasant little children. Mostly they were cheerful little children. Perhaps it was that the mother had wept out all the sorrow for them. There was no weeping that she had left over to them. They were mostly all in their later living cheerful hopeful gentle little men and women. They lived without ambition or excitement but they were each in their little circle joyful in the present. They lived and died in mildness and contentment.
It was one of these cheerful gentle little Hissen people that David Hersland married there in Bridgepoint and then took to Gossols with him. And now he with all the mixed up father and strong mother in him and this little gentle cheerful pretty little woman who yet had a fierce little temper that could be very stubborn were to come together and make a life together and to mix up well and then to have many different kinds of children through her.
They had mixed up very well. They had made a good enough success with their living.
They had had five children through her. Two of these had died as little children. Three of them had grown up and were now grown young men and women, and these three are of them who are to be always in this history of us young grown men and women to us, for it is only thus that we can ever feel them to be real inside in us, them who are of the same generation with us.
The mother, little gentle Mrs. Hersland, was very loving in her feeling to all of her children, but they had been always all three, after they had stopped being very little children, too big for her ever to control them. She could not lead them nor could she know what they needed inside them. She could not help them, she could only be hurt not angry when any bad thing happened to them.
She loved them and was very proud of all three of them. Often she wondered as she looked at them, how could they be so perfect and so wonderful and yet all three of them be so different from the others of them that there was hardly anything alike in the three of them.
They were big children and each one of them in his own way was strong to do what they needed to find themselves free inside them. They were big children and she was only a very little mother to them. And they were not very loving children, they were too strong at finding their own way to feel free and important each one to himself inside him. They were to her very good children. She never had any trouble with them. And now she was a little ailing and they were good but then she never had been very important to them.
Now we begin to learn more about the Hersland family and their way of living.
As I was saying the father David Hersland was in some ways a very splendid kind of person but he had some very uncertain things inside him. He too was very proud of his children but it was not easy for them to be free of him. Sometimes he was very angry with them. Sometimes it came to his doing very hard pounding on the table at which they would be sitting and disputing, and ending with the angry word that he was the father, they were his children, they must obey him, he was master and he knew how to make them do as he would have them. Such scenes were very hard on the little gentle mother woman who was all lost in between the angry father and the three big resentful children who knew very well what they needed to have given to them so that they could be free inside them.
This is the way the three Hersland children grew up to be strong each one to be free inside him. They were all big in themselves and in their way of winning. Soon you will learn slowly the history of each one of them, how each one was important to himself in him, and how they won a kind of freedom for themselves each one inside them.
The little mother was not very important to them. They were good enough children in their daily living but they were never very loving to her inside them. They had it too strongly in them to win their own freedom.
They turned to their father, altogether, in their thinking. It was against him inside, and strongly always around them, that they had to do the fighting for their freedom. Now the mother was a little ailing. She was all lost between the father and the three big struggling children.
In their young days the father was proud of his children, proud that they were important each one to himself inside him, proud that they needed to win for themselves their own freedom. Always then he encouraged their disputing, he wanted then that they should fight and win out against him. As I was saying David Hersland the father of these big resentful children was in some ways a splendid kind of person. But now things were going less easily around him. Joy was a little dim inside now for all of them. Now he would often be angry and be given to pounding on the table and loudly declaring, he was the father, they were the children, they must obey else he would know how to make them. And the gentle little mother who every day was giving signs of weakening would sit scared, and afterwards she would be weeping, lost between the father and the three big resentful children.
But this was all when they had become grown young men and women and joy was a little dim inside for all of them.
Now listen to their lives as children, their early struggles each one to find for themselves freedom, the abundant father in them in those days full of joyous beginning, proud of himself and of his children, glad to feel that they were strong all of them to make for themselves their own beginning.
Now I will tell you more of the Hersland ways of living in the old home with the wind and the sun and the rain beating, and the dogs and chickens and the open life, and the hay, and the men working, and the