Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle LenaStein, Gertrude
General
Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena
Stein, Gertrude
Working class women -- Fiction
Anna was now most uncertain what to do. She could go to Curden to her
Miss Mary Wadsmith who always wrote how much she needed Anna, but Anna
still dreaded Miss Jane's interfering ways. Then too, she could not
yet go away from Bridgepoint and from Mrs. Lehntman, unpleasant as it
always was now over there.
Through one of Doctor's friends Anna heard of Miss Mathilda. Anna was
very doubtful about working for a Miss Mathilda. She did not think it
would be good working for a woman anymore. She had found it very good
with Miss Mary but she did not think that many women would be so.
Most women were interfering in their ways.
Anna heard that Miss Mathilda was a great big woman, not so big
perhaps as her Miss Mary, still she was big, and the good Anna liked
them better so. She did not like them thin and small and active and
always looking in and always prying.
Anna could not make up her mind what was the best thing now for her
to do. She could sew and this way make a living, but she did not like
such business very well.
Mrs. Lehntman urged the place with Miss Mathilda. She was sure Anna
would find it better so. The good Anna did not know.
"Well Anna," Mrs. Lehntman said, "I tell you what we do. I go with you
to that woman that tells fortunes, perhaps she tell us something that
will show us what is the best way for you now to do."
It was very bad to go to a woman who tells fortunes. Anna was of
strong South German Catholic religion and the german priests in the
churches always said that it was very bad to do things so. But what
else now could the good Anna do? She was so mixed and bothered in her
mind, and troubled with this life that was all wrong, though she did
try so hard to do the best she knew. "All right, Mrs. Lehntman," Anna
said at last, "I think I go there now with you."
This woman who told fortunes was a medium. She had a house in the
lower quarter of the town. Mrs. Lehntman and the good Anna went to
her.
The medium opened the door for them herself. She was a loose made,
dusty, dowdy woman with a persuading, conscious and embracing manner
and very greasy hair.
The woman let them come into the house.
The street door opened straight into the parlor, as is the way in the
small houses of the south. The parlor had a thick and flowered carpet
on the floor. The room was full of dirty things all made by hand. Some
hung upon the wall, some were on the seats and over backs of chairs
and some on tables and on those what-nots that poor people love. And
everywhere were little things that break. Many of these little things
were broken and the place was stuffy and not clean.
No medium uses her parlor for her work. It is always in her eating
room that she has her trances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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