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
Melanctha did everything that any woman could, and at last her mother
died, and Melanctha had her buried. Melanctha's father was not heard
from, and Melanctha in all her life after, never saw or heard or knew
of anything that her father did.
It was the young doctor, Jefferson Campbell, who helped Melanctha
toward the end, to take care of her sick mother. Jefferson Campbell
had often before seen Melanctha Herbert, but he had never liked her
very well, and he had never believed that she was any good. He had
heard something about how she wandered. He knew a little too of Jane
Harden, and he was sure that this Melanctha Herbert, who was her
friend and who wandered, would never come to any good.
Dr. Jefferson Campbell was a serious, earnest, good young joyous
doctor. He liked to take care of everybody and he loved his own
colored people. He always found life very easy did Jeff Campbell, and
everybody liked to have him with them. He was so good and sympathetic,
and he was so earnest and so joyous. He sang when he was happy, and he
laughed, and his was the free abandoned laughter that gives the warm
broad glow to negro sunshine.
Jeff Campbell had never yet in his life had real trouble. Jefferson's
father was a good, kind, serious, religious man. He was a very steady,
very intelligent, and very dignified, light brown, grey haired negro.
He was a butler and he had worked for the Campbell family many years,
and his father and his mother before him had been in the service of
this family as free people.
Jefferson Campbell's father and his mother had of course been
regularly married. Jefferson's mother was a sweet, little, pale brown,
gentle woman who reverenced and obeyed her good husband, and who
worshipped and admired and loved hard her-good, earnest, cheery, hard
working doctor boy who was her only child.
Jeff Campbell had been raised religious by his people but religion had
never interested Jeff very much. Jefferson was very good. He loved
his people and he never hurt them, and he always did everything they
wanted and that he could to please them, but he really loved best
science and experimenting and to learn things, and he early wanted
to be a doctor, and he was always very interested in the life of the
colored people.
The Campbell family had been very good to him and had helped him
on with his ambition. Jefferson studied hard, he went to a colored
college, and then he learnt to be a doctor.
It was now two or three years, that he had started in to practice.
Everybody liked Jeff Campbell, he was so strong and kindly and
cheerful and understanding, and he laughed so with pure joy, and he
always liked to help all his own colored people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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