They were a group to gratify the feeling of pride in him, they were so prosperous vigorous good-looking, honest, and always respectful to him, and surely they would have later, good hope of winning for themselves all that he could ever wish to them.
     Yes it certainly was very different now with him. Could one ever have it real to him that in one life time a man could have it all so different for him, that a man all alone in his single lifetime could make it so that he could have it to be truly all so different in him.
     Nay for a man to have it in a single life time all so different for him is more strange than being born and being then a baby and then a child and then a young grown man and then old like a man grown old and then dead and so no more of living, it is more strange because it makes so many lives in this one living. Each one of these lives that he forgets or remembers only as a dim beginning is a whole life to us in our thinking, and so Henry Dehning has had many lives in him to our feeling.
     Could one believe it that he was a grown man and he was then living like the man who comes into his place now to do a little selling to the servants in the kitchen. And yet that was one whole full life for him; and then there was the old world where there had been for him such a very different kind of living. Yes as he stands there talking to his children of the things that are never real now any more to his feeling, a man comes up the walk and slinks back when he sees them and goes sneaking to the kitchen and there he sells little things to the women who buy them out of Irish fun or just to be kind to him, for his things are really not good enough for them, they are things for people poorer than any that work in a kitchen; and so Mr. Dehning goes on talking to his children and it is all more real to their feeling than it is now to his thinking, for they have it in their fear which young ones always have inside them, and he, he has it only as a dim beginning as being like a baby or an old grown man or woman. Nay how can he ever have it in him to feel it now as really present to him, such things as meekness or poor ways or self attendance or no comforts, it is only a fear that could make such things be now as present to him, and he has no such a fear ever inside him, not for himself ever or even for his children, for he is strong in a sense of always winning. It is they, the children, who, though they too feel a strength inside them and talk about it very often, yet way down deep in them they know they have no way to be really certain; and always they are brave, good-looking, honest, prosperous children and the father feels strong pride as he looks around him.
     The Dehning family was made of this father and mother and three children. Mr. Dehning was very proud of his children and proud of all the things he knew that they could teach him. There were two daughters and a son of them.
     Julia Dehning was named after her grandmother, but, as her father often told her, she never looked the least bit like her and yet there was a little in her that made the old world not all lost to her, a little that made one always remember that her grandmother and her father had had always a worn old world to remember.
     Yes Julia looked much like her mother. That fair good-looking prosperous woman had stamped her image on each one of her children, and with her eldest, Julia, the stamp went deep, far deeper than just for the fair good-looking exterior.
     Julia Dehning was now just eighteen and she showed in all its vigor, the self-satisfied crude domineering American girlhood that was strong inside her. Perhaps she was born too near to the old world to ever attain quite altogether that crude virginity that makes the American girl safe in all her liberty. Yes the American girl is a crude virgin and she is safe in her freedom.
     And now, so thought her mother, and Julia was quite of the same opinion, the time had come for Julia to have a husband and to begin her real important living.
     Under Julia's very American face, body, clothes and manner and her vigor of the domineering and crude virgin, there were now and then flashes of passion that lit up an older well hidden tradition. Yes in Julia Dehning the prosperous, good-looking, domineering woman was a very attractive being. Julia irradiated energy and brilliant enjoying, she was vigorous, and like her mother, fair and firmly compacted, and she was full of bright hopes, and strong in the spirit of success that she felt always in her. Julia was much given to hearty joyous laughing and to an ardent honest feeling, and she hit the ground as she walked with the same hard jerking with which her mother Mrs. Dehning always rebuked her husband's sinning. Yes Julia Dehning was bright and full of vigor, and with something always a little harsh in her, making underneath her young bright vigorous ardent honest feeling a little of the sense of rasping that was just now in her mother's talking.
     And so those who read much in story books surely now can tell what to expect of her, and yet, please reader, remember that this is perhaps not the whole of our story either, neither her father for her, nor the living down her mother who is in her, for I am not ready yet to take away the character from our Julia, for truly she may work out as the story books would have her or we may find all different kinds of things for her, and so reader, please remember, the future is not yet certain for her, and be you well warned reader, from the vain-glory of being sudden in your judgment of her.
     After Julia came the boy George and he was not named after his grandfather.