Steinway _--_ Sons

“ Adolf. Don't you think you should go half-way and come to an agreement with Mistress in this fuss over the child? Just think of a mother--
CAPTAIN. Think of a father, Margret.
NURSE. There, there, there. A father has something besides his child, but a mother has nothing but her child.
CAPTAIN. Just so, you old dear. She has only one burden, but I have three, and I have her burden too. Don't you think that I should hold a better position in the world than that of a poor soldier if I had not had her and her child? ”

“ For three years the father and the three sons, Charles, Henry, and William, worked in different New York piano factories. In March 1853 they agreed to unite and start in business on their own account, and the firm of 'Steinway & Sons' was established. In 1855 they exhibited a square piano in which the American iron frame principle of a single casting was combined with a cross or overstrung scale, forming the foundation of the so-called 'Steinway system,' which, as applied to grand pianos, attracted great attention in the London International Exhibition of 1862. ”

“ John's father, who generally had the outward imperturbability of the Icelander, was now softened. He took his sons by the hands and said: "God has visited us; we will now hold together like friends. Men go about in their self-sufficiency, and believe they are enough for themselves; then comes a blow, and we see how we all need one another. We will be sincere and considerate with each other."
The boy's sorrow was for a moment relieved. He had found a friend, a strong, wise, manly friend whom he admired.
White sheets were now hung up at the windows of the house in sign of mourning. ”

“ I was thinking of my parents.
And when I entered the house of my parents, I could hardly recognize them. Wrinkled, bent, with sunken cheeks, they had changed entirely in appearance.
Father looked at my buttons, removed his cap, and stood bent before me. Mother was busying herself at the oven, and began to speak to father in a mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish: "Sure enough, some sort of taxes again. . . . Much do we need it now. . . ." Then, in a fit of spitefulness, I made believe I was a stranger.
"Old people," said I, "I have brought you news from your son Samuel." ”

“ Sons were so brought up that they might remain sons their whole lives long, without any regard to the fact that some day they might be fathers. But John already possessed the lower-class instinct which told him, with regard to the Reform Bill, that now an injustice had been done away with, and that the higher scale had been lowered, in order that it might be easier for the lower one to rise to the same level. ”

“ What will you do for me?
LAURA. What can I do? I will swear by God and all I hold sacred that you are Bertha's father.
CAPTAIN. What use is that when you have often said that a mother can and ought to commit any crime for her child? I implore you as a wounded man begs for a death blow, to tell me all. Don't you see I'm as helpless as a child? Don't you hear me complaining as to a mother? Won't you forget that I am a man, that I am a soldier who can tame men and beasts with a word? Like a sick man I only ask for compassion. ”

“ The padre and madre were there, and a throng of brothers and sisters and relatives, who greeted the travellers with noisy and affectionate salutations.
Bessie’s madre held her at arm’s length at first, as if to be sure that this fine Signorina was really the little girl she left behind in New York twelve years ago. Ah, me! It was a love-hungry heart to which Bessie was pressed. And the boys! What pride shone on the father’s face! Any father might be proud of them, and I was prouder than the father.
“See what America does for your men!” ”

“ Artisans, poorly clad old women, restaurant-keepers dressed up for the occasion, coach-men, and publicans formed the audience. And the speech of the school inspector was quite other than the flowery one of the Archbishop. He read out the names of the idle and the stupid, scolded the parents because their children came too late or did not turn up at all, and the hall reechoed the sobs of poor mothers who were probably not at all to blame for the easily explained non-attendances, and who in their simplicity believed that they had bad sons. ”

“ In his family life there was now a certain degree of prosperity. They had gone back to the Norrtullsgata, where it was more homely than the Sabbatsberg, and the landlord's sons were his school-fellows. His father no longer rented a garden, and John busied himself for the most part with his books. He led the life of a well-to-do-youth. Things were more cheerful at home; grown-up cousins and the clerks from his father's office came on Sundays for visits, and John, in spite of his youth, made one of the company. ”

“ If you tickle us do we not laugh? And if you poison us, do we not die? Why shouldn't a man complain, a soldier weep? Because it is unmanly? Why is it unmanly?
LAURA. Weep then, my child, as if you were with your mother once more. Do you remember when I first came into your life, I was like a second mother? Your great strong body needed nerves; you were a giant child that had either come too early into the world, or perhaps was not wanted at all.
CAPTAIN. Yes, that's how it was. My father's and my mother's will was against my coming into the world, and consequently I was born without a will. ”

“ He had rods in one hand and a piece of swine's flesh in the other. He put the piece of pork into my mouth. I looked up, terror-stricken, to my father, but he smiled. His smile filled the place with light. He said to me, 'Eatest thou this of thy own free will?' Then he began to soar upwards, and called out to me from afar: 'Tell all thy comrades, the Cantonists: Your reward is great. Every sigh of yours is a prayer, every good thought of yours is a good action! Only beware, lest you die of hunger; then surely you will merit eternal punishment!'
"I awoke. ”

“ Even the guard could not stand it; he scolded us, and belabored us with his whip. That crying of ours reminds me of what we read in lamentations: "Weeping she hath wept in the night. . . ."
Morning came, and found us all awake: we were waiting for daylight. We believed it would bring us freedom, that angels would descend from Heaven, just as they had descended to our father Jacob, to smite our guard and set us free. At the same time, the rising sun brought us all a feeling of hunger. We began to sigh, each and every one of us separately. ”

“ What did Nöjd want here?
CAPTAIN. That is an official secret.
LAURA. Which the whole kitchen knows!
CAPTAIN. Good, then you must know it.
LAURA. I do know it.
CAPTAIN. And have your judgment ready-made?
LAURA. My judgment is the judgment of the law.
CAPTAIN. But it is not written in the law who the child's father is.
LAURA. No, but one usually knows that.
CAPTAIN. Wise minds claim that one can never know.
LAURA. That's strange. Can't one ever know who the father of a child is?
CAPTAIN. No; so they claim.
LAURA. How extraordinary! How can the father have such control over the children then? ”

“ Then there enters the pale youth in mourning garb and opposes his step-father. Ah! he has a step-father. "That is as bad as having a stepmother," thought John. "That's the man for me!" And then they try to oppress him and squeeze sympathy out of him for the tyrant. The youth's ego revolts, but his will is paralysed; he threatens, but he cannot strike. ”

“ When I awoke, I found myself surrounded by a flock of sheep, in a meadow near the woods. Near me was my brother Solomon; but I hardly recognized him. He wore peasant clothes: a linen shirt turned out over linen breeches and gathered in by a broad belt. I was eyeing my brother, and he was eyeing me, both of us equally bewildered, for I was disguised like himself.
A little boy, a real peasant boy, was standing near us. He smiled at us in a good-natured, hospitable way. It was the chore-boy of the Jewish quarter. On the Sabbaths of the winter months he kept up the fires in the Jewish houses ”

“ Who is the fleshly father of the spiritual child?
LAURA. And as for your suspicions about the child, they are absolutely groundless.
CAPTAIN. That's just what makes it so horrible. If at least there were any grounds for them, it would be something to get hold of, to cling to. Now there are only shadows that hide themselves in the bushes, and stick out their heads and grin; it is like fighting with the air, or firing blank cartridges in a sham fight. A fatal reality would have called forth resistance, stirred life and soul to action ”

“ Jacob was carried off to the hospital, and it was put down in the book that he was to get ten more lashes after his recover.
I went home.
Had Anna given me a piece of pork to eat that evening, I do not know what I should have done.
That night I saw the old rabbi in my dream. He was standing before me, with bowed head and tears dropping from his eyes. . . . .
I do not remember the way Marusya treated me at first. But I do remember the look she gave me when I first entered her father's house. There are trifling matters that one remembers forever. Hers was a telltale look, wild and merry. ”

“ But here on the Battery, where Jacob meets his Leah, for whom he has toiled and suffered these five years, for whose sake he ate hard rye bread and onions that he might save money to bring her to him;—when Jacob meets his Leah, there are warm embraces and kisses through the tears. Here, men embrace and kiss each other, and children are held up to the father’s gaze,—fathers who left them as infants and now see them grown. ”

“ I am now thirty-five," he added with caustic humour, and emptied his glass.
"Why don't you choose another occupation?" asked Sten in a friendly and child-like way.
"Choose? One doesn't choose, young sir. Society in the city is a building in which each man is a stone fitted into its place; if he moves, he disturbs the whole edifice. But society has committed an oversight by not forbidding men in my position to marry. For if the fathers cannot marry till they are thirty and die at thirty-six, the children must go under." ”

“ Her father had been assassinated in Ireland when she was but a mere child, and her mother, who had never recovered the shock of her husband’s death, died but a year or two afterwards, so that she had been left an orphan long before her school-days were over. Her mother’s sister had then received her under her roof, and had the girl educated for a governess, in which capacity her own daughter—before her marriage to Herr Steindorf—was then acting in an English family resident abroad. ”

“ And in case I should be worrying about his welfare Uncle Chandler would send me a weekly night-letter “describing the condition and the activities of the child,” as the letter expresses it. It sounds very appealing, but every time I try to think it over my heart goes down like a dab-chick. My Dinkie is such a little fellow. And he’s my first-born, my man-child, and he means so much in my life. Yet he and his father are not getting along very well together. It would be better, in many respects, if the boy could get away for a while, until the raw edges healed over again. ”

“ He felt that he had lost a real friend, for during the twelve months of her illness he had come to know her personally, as it were, and established a relationship between them which is rare between parents and children. He was a clever boy and had developed early; he had read a great many books besides his schoolbooks, for his father, a professor of botany at the Academy of Science, possessed a very good library. His mother, on the other hand, was not a well-educated woman; she had merely been head housekeeper and children’s nurse in her husband’s house. ”

“ She binds the child to herself with a thousand threads which never grant sufficient freedom for mental and spiritual expansion. It is not necessary to be as bitter as Strindberg to realize this. There are of course exceptional mothers who continue to grow with the child. But the average mother is like the hen with her brood, forever fretting about her chicks if they venture a step away from the coop. The mother enslaves with kindness,- a bondage harder to bear and more difficult to escape than the brutal fist of the father. ”

“ It does not suit a man of my age to go into particulars, the way the story-writers do. Suffice it to tell you that our relations became very much complicated. Marusya attached herself to me; she became a sister to me.
So, after all, Jacob's fears had been well founded from the very beginning. ”

“ When John came home, he gave his mother the bouquet as from Gustav, and she was touched. At supper-time the flowers attracted his father's attention. "Gustav sent me those," said his mother. "He is always a kind boy," and John received a sad look because he was so cold-hearted. His father's eyes gleamed behind his glasses.
John felt no bitterness. His youthful, enthusiastic love of sacrifice had found vent, the struggle against injustice had made him a self-tormentor, and he kept silent. ”

“ Pan Stanislav looked for a long time at that sick face, and felt again, with full force, what he had felt often, when he thought of himself,—namely, that nature had made him to be a father; that, besides the woman of his choice, children might be the immense love of his life, the chief object and reason of his existence. He understood this, through the pity and love which he felt at that moment for Litka, who, a stranger to him by birth, was as dear to him then as would have been his own child. ”