s. 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.

Melanctha Herbert who was Rose Johnson's friend, did everything that
any woman could. She tended Rose, and she was patient, submissive,
soothing, and untiring, while the sullen, childish, cowardly, black
Rosie grumbled and fussed and howled and made herself to be an
abomination and like a simple beast.

The child though it was healthy after it was born, did not live
long. Rose Johnson was careless and negligent and selfish, and when
Melanctha had to leave for a few days, the baby died. Rose Johnson had
liked the baby well enough and perhaps she just forgot it for awhile,
anyway the child was dead and Rose and Sam her husband were very sorry
but then these things came so often in the negro world in Bridgepoint,
that they neither of them thought about it very long.

Rose Johnson and Melanctha Herbert had been friends now for some
years. Rose had lately married Sam Johnson a decent honest kindly
fellow, a deck hand on a coasting steamer.

Melanctha Herbert had not yet been really married.

Rose Johnson was a real black, tall, well built, sullen, stupid,
childlike, good looking negress. She laughed when she was happy and
grumbled and was sullen with everything that troubled.

Rose Johnson was a real black negress but she had been brought up
quite like their own child by white folks.

Rose laughed when she was happy but she had not the wide, abandoned
laughter that makes the warm broad glow of negro sunshine. Rose was
never joyous with the earth-born, boundless joy of negroes. Hers was
just ordinary, any sort of woman laughter.

Rose Johnson was careless and was lazy, but she had been brought up by
white folks and she needed decent comfort. Her white training had
only made for habits, not for nature. Rose had the simple, promiscuous
immorality of the black people.

Rose Johnson and Melanctha Herbert like many of the twos with women
were a curious pair to be