Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena — John Shaqi
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
"No Miss Mathilda," she would say, "The young people nowadays have no
sense for saving and putting money by so they will have something to
use when they need it. There's Julia and her Charley. I went in there
the other day, Miss Mathilda, and they had a new table with a marble
top and on it they had a grand new plush album. 'Where you get that
album?' I asked Julia. 'Oh, Charley he gave it to me for my birthday,'
she said, and I asked her if it was paid for and she said not all
yet but it would be soon. Now I ask you what business have they Miss
Mathilda, when they ain't paid for anything they got already, what
business have they to be buying new things for her birthdays. Julia
she don't do no work, she just sits around and thinks how she can
spend the money, and Charley he never puts one cent by. I never see
anything like the people nowadays Miss Mathilda, they don't seem to
have any sense of being careful about money. Julia and Charley when
they have any children they won't have nothing to bring them up with
right. I said that to Julia, Miss Mathilda, when she showed me those
silly things that Charley bought her, and she just said in her silly,
giggling way, perhaps they won't have any children. I told her she
ought to be ashamed of talking so, but I don't know, Miss Mathilda,
the young people nowadays have no sense at all of what's the right
way for them to do, and perhaps its better if they don't have any
children, and then Miss Mathilda you know there is Mrs. Lehntman. You
know she regular adopted little Johnny just so she could pay out some
more money just as if she didn't have trouble enough taking care of
her own children. No Miss Mathilda, I never see how people can do
things so. People don't seem to have no sense of right or wrong or
anything these days Miss Mathilda, they are just careless and thinking
always of themselves and how they can always have a happy time. No,
Miss Mathilda I don't see how people can go on and do things so."
The good Anna could not understand the careless and bad ways of all
the world and always she grew bitter with it all. No, not one of them
had any sense of what was the right way for them to do.
Anna's past life was now drawing to an end. Her old blind dog, Baby,
was sick and like to die. Baby had been the first gift from her friend
the widow, Mrs. Lehntman in the old days when Anna had been with Miss
Mary Wadsmith, and when these two women had first come together.
Through all the years of change, Baby had stayed with the good Anna,
growing old and fat and blind and lazy. Baby had been active and a
ratter when she was young, but that was so long ago it was forgotten,
and for many years now Baby had wanted only her warm basket and her
dinner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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