Everybody's Autobiography by Gertrude Stein Page B

to say not a happy one, the kind that naturally were not happy when they were children are the kind that believe in intelligence and progress and understanding. Well well.
    Anyway my brother needed to be talking and he was painting but he needed to talk about painting in order to be painting, he needed to understand painting in order to be painting.
    So we went on.
    Gradually I was writing.
    About an unhappy childhood well I never had an unhappy anything. What is the use of having an unhappy anything.
    My brother and I had had everything. Gradually he was rememberingthat his childhood had not been a happy one. My eldest brother and I had not had that impression, certainly not however my brother led in everything. He had always been my brother two years older and a brother. I had always been following.
    As I say I was writing and well why not I was writing the way I was writing and it came to be the writing of The Making of Americans.
    I was writing in the way I was writing. I did not show what I was doing to my brother, he looked at it and he did not say anything. Why not. Well there was nothing to say about it and really I had nothing to say about it. Gradually he had something to say about it. I did not hear him say it. Slowly we were not saying anything about it that is we never had said anything about it.
    That was about the time when Stieglitz said I sat for hours and I said nothing, well there was nothing to say because just then saying anything was nothing. How could I say anything when there was nothing to say and how could there be anything to say when I was doing what I was doing which was the writing of the Making of Americans. We were together as much as ever.
    Then slowly he began explaining not what I was doing but he was explaining, and explaining well explaining might have been an explanation. Now and then I was not listening. This had never happened to me before up to that time I had always been listening sometimes arguing very often just being interested and being interesting and very often it was just that we had always been together as we always were.
    This is what happened then.
    Slowly and in a way it was not astonishing but slowly I was knowing that I was a genius and it was happening and I did not say anything but I was almost ready to begin to say something. My brother began saying something and this is what he said.
    He said it was not it it was I. If I was not there to be there with what I did then what I did would not be what it was. In otherwords if no one knew me actually then the things I did would not be what they were.
    He did not say it to me but he said it so that it would be true for me. And it did not trouble me and as it did not trouble me I knew it was not true and a little as it did not trouble me he knew it was not true.
    But it destroyed him for me and it destroyed me for him.
    Because there was this thing it should have been in him, he knew it best so it should have been in him.
    It is funny this thing of being a genius, there is no reason for it, there is no reason that it should be you and should not have been him, no reason at all that it should have been you, no no reason at all.
    That is the way he felt about it and it was a natural thing, because he understood everything and if you understand everything and besides that are leading and besides that do do what you do there is no reason why it should not be creating, and that is he was that and had always been and I had not been that but I had been it enough to be following, now why should it come to be that it should be something else now just why should it. Well well just why should it. The only thing about it was that it was I who was the genius, there was no reason for it but I was, and he was not there was a reason for it but he was not and that was the beginning of the ending and we always had been together and now we were never at all together. Little by little we never met again.
    This was the story I told Seabrook by the