Everybody's Autobiography by Gertrude Stein Page B

any worry lines on them. That was because Frenchmen and Frenchwomen in general lived on last year’s income and not on this one. So much so that one woman never used today’s milk, she always used yesterday’s milk. Some day, so she said, there will be no milk but I will have some. And it did happen, war came and there was no milk but she had some. Nobody in France no matter how poor or how rich ever thought of living on current earnings, they always lived on last year’s earnings and that made the French live their unworried living, the only thing that ever troubled them was the possibility of war or the possibility of changing the regime,that is a revolution, but otherwise there was nothing to worry them except family quarrels and family quarrels are exciting but not really worrisome, so Frenchwomen never had worry lines in their faces. And now they had because they were spending this year’s earnings. But even so they were beginning to hope not going on doing this thing and they were beginning economizing.
    And so gradually Paris was beginning to be as it had been. They had had their war, and now perhaps they are going to have their revolution, well anyway, I was liking Paris but it was not very exciting, as Paris, but it was very exciting as myself selling The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
    While I was writing it I used to ask Alice B. Toklas if she thought it was going to be a best seller and she said no she did not think so because it was not sentimental enough and then later on when it was a best seller she said well after all it was sentimental enough.
    As I had said I always wanted two things to happen to be printed in the Atlantic Monthly and in the Saturday Evening Post and so I told Mr. Bradley that I wanted him to try the Atlantic Monthly.
    I do wish Mildred Aldrich had lived to see it, she would have liked it, for they did print it, but after all I do want them to print something else to prove that it was not only that that they wanted but of course they do not. I can be accepted more than I was but I can be refused almost as often. After all if nobody refuses what you offer there must be something the matter, I do not quite know why this is so but it is so. It was not so in the nineteenth century but it is so in the twentieth century. And that is because talking and writing have gotten more and more separated. Talking is not thinking or feeling at all any more, it used to be but it is not now but writing is, and so writing naturally needs more refusing.
    So Aspinwall Bradley made these arrangements and we were all of us very happy, and fan letters began to pour in and also money.
    Henry McBride always said that success spoils one and he always used to say to me that he hoped that I would not have any and now I was having some. He was very sweet about it and said it pleased him as much as it did me and it did not spoil me but even so it did change me.
    The thing is like this, it is all the question of identity. It is all a question of the outside being outside and the inside being inside. As long as the outside does not put a value on you it remains outside but when it does put a value on you then it gets inside or rather if the outside puts a value on you then all your inside gets to be outside. I used to tell all the men who were being successful young how bad this was for them and then I who was no longer young was having it happen.
    But there was the spending of money and there is no doubt about it there is no pleasure like it, the sudden splendid spending of money and we spent it.
    We had always lived so very simply, we had a home in the country but we lived in that just as simply as we did in the city. It was always a surprise to every one to really know how little we lived on. We lived very comfortably but we lived very simply and we had no expenses, we had a car but we made it cost as little as possible and for many years it was well it still is a little old Ford car. But now I