Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein With Two Shorter Stories Gertrude Stein [Transcriber’s Note: All apparent spelling errors, possible typos, and one (missing?) period have been checked against the images used for transcription, and left as found. This transcription was made from a modern edition, and it is not clear if these oddities were intended or introduced. Please consult an authoritative edition before quoting from this transcription.] Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein _Also known as: G.M.P._ With Two Shorter Stories A LONG GAY BOOK 1909-1912 MANY MANY WOMEN 1910 G.M.P. 1911-1912 A LONG GAY BOOK When they are very little just only a baby you can never tell which one is to be a lady. There are some when they feel it inside them that it has been with them that there was once so very little of them, that they were a baby, helpless and no conscious feeling in them, that they knew nothing then when they were kissed and dandled and fixed by others who knew them when they could know nothing inside them or around them, some get from all this that once surely happened to them to that which was then every bit that was then them, there are some when they feel it later inside them that they were such once and that was all that there was then of them, there are some who have from such a knowing an uncertain curious kind of feeling in them that their having been so little once and knowing nothing makes it all a broken world for them that they have inside them, kills for them the everlasting feeling; and they spend their life in many ways, and always they are trying to make for themselves a new everlasting feeling. One way perhaps of winning is to make a little one to come through them, little like the baby that once was all them and lost them their everlasting feeling. Some can win from just the feeling, the little one need not come, to give it to them. And so always there is beginning and to some then a losing of the everlasting feeling. Then they make a baby to make for themselves a new beginning and so win for themselves a new everlasting feeling. It is never very much to be a baby, to be such a very little thing and knowing nothing. It certainly is a very little thing and almost nothing to be a baby and without a conscious feeling. It is nothing, to be, without anything to know inside them or around them, just a baby and that was all there was once of them and so it is a broken world around them when they think of this beginning and then they lose their everlasting feeling. Then they make a baby or they have the feeling and so they win what once a baby lost them. It is not very much to be a baby. It certainly is nothing just to be one, to be without a conscious feeling. It is something to have a baby come into the world by way of them but it certainly is not very much to have been the little thing that was once all them. It is something to have a baby come into the world through them. It is nothing just to be one.