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
The things that Anna really needed were to rest sometimes and eat more
so that she could get stronger, but these were the last things that
Anna could bring herself to do. Anna could never take a rest. She must
work hard through the summer as well as through the winter, else she
could never make both ends meet. The doctor gave her medicines to make
her stronger but these did not seem to do much good.
Anna grew always more tired, her headaches came oftener and harder,
and she was now almost always feeling very sick. She could not sleep
much in the night. The dogs with their noises disturbed her and
everything in her body seemed to pain her.
The doctor and the good father tried often to make her give herself
more care. Mrs. Drehten told her that she surely would not get well
unless for a little while she would stop working. Anna would then
promise to take care, to rest in bed a little longer and to eat more
so that she would get stronger, but really how could Anna eat when she
always did the cooking and was so tired of it all, before it was half
ready for the table?
Anna's only friendship now was with good Mrs. Drehten who was too
gentle and too patient to make a stubborn faithful german Anna ever do
the way she should, in the things that were for her own good.
Anna grew worse all through this second winter. When the summer came
the doctor said that she simply could not live on so. He said she must
go to his hospital and there he would operate upon her. She would then
be well and strong and able to work hard all next winter.
Anna for some time would not listen. She could not do this so, for
she had her house all furnished and she simply could not let it go. At
last a woman came and said she would take care of Anna's boarders and
then Anna said that she was prepared to go.
Anna went to the hospital for her operation. Mrs. Drehten was herself
not well but she came into the city, so that some friend would be
with the good Anna. Together, then, they went to this place where the
doctor had done so well by Mrs. Drehten.
In a few days they had Anna ready. Then they did the operation, and
then the good Anna with her strong, strained, worn-out body died.
Mrs. Drehten sent word of her death to Miss Mathilda.
"Dear Miss Mathilda," wrote Mrs. Drehten, "Miss Annie died in the
hospital yesterday after a hard operation. She was talking about you
and Doctor and Miss Mary Wadsmith all the time. She said she hoped
you would take Peter and the little Rags to keep when you came back
to America to live. I will keep them for you here Miss Mathilda. Miss
Annie died easy, Miss Mathilda, and sent you her love."
FINIS
MELANCTHA
EACH ONE AS SHE MAY
Rose Johnson made it very hard to bring her baby to its birth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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