Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle LenaStein, Gertrude
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Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena
Stein, Gertrude
Working class women -- Fiction
Jeff learned every day now, more and more, how much it was that he
could really suffer. Sometimes it hurt so in him, when he was alone,
it would force some slow tears from him. But every day, now that Jeff
Campbell, knew more how it could hurt him, he lost his feeling of deep
awe that he once always had had for Melanctha's feeling. Suffering was
not so much after all, thought Jeff Campbell, if even he could feel it
so it hurt him. It hurt him bad, just the way he knew he once had hurt
Melanctha, and yet he too could have it and not make any kind of a
loud holler with it.
In tender hearted natures, those that mostly never feel strong
passion, suffering often comes to make them harder. When these do not
know in themselves what it is to suffer, suffering is then very awful
to them and they badly want to help everyone who ever has to suffer,
and they have a deep reverence for anybody who knows really how to
always surfer. But when it comes to them to really suffer, they soon
begin to lose their fear and tenderness and wonder. Why it isn't so
very much to suffer, when even I can bear to do it. It isn't very
pleasant to be having all the time, to stand it, but they are not so
much wiser after all, all the others just because they know too how to
bear it.
Passionate natures who have always made themselves, to suffer, that is
all the kind of people who have emotions that come to them as sharp as
a sensation, they always get more tender-hearted when they suffer, and
it always does them good to suffer. Tender-hearted, unpassionate, and
comfortable natures always get much harder when they suffer, for
so they lose the fear and reverence and wonder they once had for
everybody who ever has to suffer, for now they know themselves what it
is to suffer and it is not so awful any longer to them when they know
too, just as well as all the others, how to have it.
And so it came in these days to Jeff Campbell. Jeff knew now always,
way inside him, what it is to really suffer, and now every day with
it, he knew how to understand Melanctha better. Jeff Campbell still
loved Melanctha Herbert and he still had a real trust in her and
he still had a little hope that some day they would once more get
together, but slowly, every day, this hope in him would keep growing
always weaker. They still were a good deal of time together, but now
they never any more were really trusting with each other. In the days
when they used to be together, Jeff had felt he did not know much what
was inside Melanctha, but he knew very well, how very deep always was
his trust in her; now he knew Melanctha Herbert better, but now he
never felt a deep trust in her. Now Jeff never could be really honest
with her. He never doubted yet, that she was steady only to him, but
somehow he could not believe much really in Melanctha's loving.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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