Yes, what, well, tell me, you all like to be always explaining to me, tell me exactly what you are going to get from all these your expensive modern kinds of ways of doing. Well I say, just tell me some kind of way so that I can understand you. You know I like to get good value for my money, I always had a name for being pretty good at trading, I say, you know I like to know just what I am getting for my money and you children do certainly cost a great deal of my money, now I say, tell me, I am glad to listen to you, I say you tell me just what you are going to do, to make it good all this money. Well what, what are all these kinds of improvements going to do for you.”
     The children laughed, “You see you can't tell yet sir,” they answered, “it will be different but I guess we will be good for something.”
     “No you children never will be good for something if I have any right kind of a way to know it,” Mr. Dehning answered, and he looked very sharply at them. And this was a cheerful challenge to them for he liked it and they liked it too with him, to light strongly against him in the everlasting struggle of conscious unproved power in the young against dogmatic pride in having done it, of the old ones.
     This father was proud of his children and yet, too, very reproachful in his feeling toward them. His wife from perhaps more than equal living with him never much regarded such a feeling in him, but to the young ones it was new for them however often it came to them, for it always meant a new fighting for the right to their kind of power that they felt strongly inside them.
     But always there was a little of the dread in them that comes to even grown young men and women from an old man's sharp looking, for deep down is the fear, perhaps he really knows, his look is so outward from him, he certainly has used it all up the things inside him at which young ones are still always looking. And then comes the strong feeling.. no he never has had it inside him the way that gives it a real meaning, and so the young ones are firm to go on with their fighting. And always they stay with their father and listen to him.
     His wife from her more than equal living, as it sometimes is in women, has not such a dread of his really knowing when it comes to their ways of living, and then it is really only talking with him for now it is completely his own only way of living, and so she never listens to him, is deaf to him or goes away when he begins this kind of talking. But his children always stay and listen to him. They are ready very strongly to explain their new ways to him. But he does not listen to them, he goes on telling what he has done and what he thinks of them.
     “No I say I don't think you children ever will be good for something. No you won't ever know how to make a living, not if all the ways I have seen men make a success in working is any kind of use to tell from. Well, what, what do you know with all your always talking, what do you know about how good hard work is done now? What is it you know now, when there is nothing you can any of you ever do anyway I ever saw you trying? No there is too much education business and literary effects in you all for you ever to amount to something, and then you will be always wanting more and so you never will do anything when you have nobody there to always help you. I always tell your mother, she always spoils you wanting you should have all kinds of things that you are never really needing. Not that I have anything to say against your mother's ways of doing. Miss Jenny is the best girl I know, she is too good to you that's all, she spoils all you children the way it always is with a woman giving you all what will never help to make you good for something in any kind of a way to earn a living, what, alright, I say to you, you children have an easy time of it now always doing nothing. Well, what, you think you can do it better with all your literary effects you are all so proud of. Well alright, in a few years now we will see who knows best about you then, I say, you can show me what these new fangled notions and all your modern kinds of improvements and all your education business you and your mamma are now all so fond of can do for you. Yes I say, it is only a few years now and then we all can see how you can do it. No I never had it easy like you children and I had to make it all myself so you could have it different. Yes I am always saying it to you but you think you know it all by yourselves and you never listen to me. Yes it was very different once with me. Yes when I was younger than George here and my brother Adolph was no bigger than my little Hortense, we left home to come and make our way here. We did not have much money so all the family could not come over on the same ship together, and I remember how lonesome Adolph and I were when we went away from home alone together.