Free Everybody's Autobiography by Gertrude Stein

cooking and she managed the young girls from the country whom she taught to do everything and she would gently push them forward and then back until she made good waitresses of them and she looked after all the fruit and the cake and chose the right one for every one and they made a great deal of money everybody did of course just then but they made more than any of them. Once in a while she said to us, well she did not say it, but once in a while she did say it as if it was, not the work, but something was overwhelming, not the not going out, that was not overwhelming not her children, she had three boys and a little girl, well anyway they did go on as they always had done. Then they decided and it was a little late because the time for making money was almost over,they decided to add another building and build a new kitchen and a new refrigerator and having everything electric. It began just as they were not earning as much as they had been and that is worrisome but anyway they went on. Then the second son was to come and help his father and succeed him. Then this boy had tuberculosis and they had to send him to the mountains and now for the first time they went out because they had to go and visit him. Then one day, it was that summer, she was found early in the morning on the cement where she had fallen, and they picked her up and took her to the hospital and no one staying in the hotel knew anything had happened to her and then she was very religious she always had been and then she was dead and I went to the church, and in the French way went up to shake hands with the husband and the father and the two sons and the hotel keeper who had been a very fat little man became a very thin one and his son was cured and all his sons came to be with him in the hotel business and he went out from time to time and whether they will pay for the new piece of hotel or not is not anybody’s business. Anyway he is courageous enough to fly a flag just now when communism has commenced and the national flag is particularly forbidden.
    As I say it was a queer summer and our Italian servants were gone and we had someone find us another man and wife to replace them.
    It is undoubtedly a very strange thing that when there is a great deal of unemployment you can never get anybody to do any work. But that is natural enough because if everybody is unemployed everybody loses the habit of work, and work like revolutions is a habit it just naturally is.
    So Georges Maratier put an advertisement in the paper and saw a great many couples who were not worth anything and finally he said he had found an excellent one and was sending them. He did not tell us they had a child with them, however they had and it was quite a pretty one and she went up the stairs and down again veryprettily indeed but that was not surprising as her mother was a Portuguese and had been and still was a very pretty woman. The husband was an Alsatian and like many Alsatians he felt he could do everything even if he had never done anything and he mostly had not. Also as do most Alsatians he admired writing and he said to me, Madame, I have a great deal of pleasure in telling you that my wife and myself and my daughter are going to dedicate our lives to you as long as you are living, all that I ask of you is that if anything happens to me you will undertake their care for their future life. Yes yes I said, and that pleased him. Soon we found that she cooked beautifully but she only had one kidney and if you only have one kidney and you cook beautifully and have a husband who does nothing it is very tiring. And it was, and she could not sleep and so the Alsatian thought they would all sleep under the trees. You can not very well do that in the mountains particularly if you have one kidney missing, it is cold and there is dew under the trees and besides country people do not like to see it, not here. All this excited the Alsatian.
    Everything excited the Alsatian until the people