st kill herself some time, the way she always say it
would be easy way for her to do. I never see nobody ever could be so
awful blue."

But Melanctha Herbert never really killed herself because she was so
blue, though often she thought this would be really the best way for
her to do. Melanctha never killed herself, she only got a bad fever
and went into the hospital where they took good care of her and cured
her.

When Melanctha was well again, she took a place and began to work
and to live regular. Then Melanctha got very sick again; she began to
cough and sweat and be so weak she could not stand to do her work.

Melanctha went back to the hospital, and there the Doctor told her she
had the consumption, and before long she would surely die. They sent
her where she would be taken care of, a home for poor consumptives,
and there Melanctha stayed until she died.

FINIS

THE GENTLE LENA

Lena was patient, gentle, sweet and german. She had been a servant for
four years and had liked it very well.

Lena had been brought from Germany to Bridgepoint by a cousin and had
been in the same place there for four years.

This place Lena had found very good. There was a pleasant, unexacting
mistress and her children, and they all liked Lena very well.

There was a cook there who scolded Lena a great deal but Lena's german
patience held no suffering and the good incessant woman really only
scolded so for Lena's good.

Lena's german voice when she knocked and called the family in the
morning was as awakening, as soothing, and as appealing, as a delicate
soft breeze in midday, summer. She stood in the hallway every morning
a long time in her unexpectant and unsuffering german patience calling
to the young ones to get up. She would call and wait a long time and
then call again, always even, gentle, patient, while the young ones
fell back often into that precious, tense, last bit of sleeping that
gives a strength of joyous vigor in the young, over them that have
come to the readiness of middle age, in their awakening.

Lena had good hard work all morning, and on the pleasant, sunny
afternoons she was sent out into the park to sit and watch the little
two year old girl baby of the family.

The other girls, all them that make the pleasant, lazy crowd, that
watch the children in the sunny afternoons out in the park, all liked
the simple, gentle, german Lena very well. They all, too, liked very
well to tease her, for it w