Three Lives

Three Lives, by Gertrude Stein

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Title: Three Lives Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The
Gentle Lena
Author: Gertrude Stein
Release Date: March 18, 2005 [EBook #15408]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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LIVES ***

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Three Lives
Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena
GERTRUDE STEIN

Donc je suis malheureux et ce n'est ni ma faute ni celle de la vie.[1]
Jules Laforgue
[Footnote 1: Therefore I am unhappy and it is neither my fault nor that
of life.]

Contents
page
The Good Anna 1 Melanctha 47 The Gentle Lena 142

THE GOOD ANNA


Part I
The tradesmen of Bridgepoint learned to dread the sound of "Miss
Mathilda", for with that name the good Anna always conquered.
The strictest of the one price stores found that they could give things
for a little less, when the good Anna had fully said that "Miss
Mathilda" could not pay so much and that she could buy it cheaper "by
Lindheims."
Lindheims was Anna's favorite store, for there they had bargain days,
when flour and sugar were sold for a quarter of a cent less for a pound,
and there the heads of the departments were all her friends and always
managed to give her the bargain prices, even on other days.

Anna led an arduous and troubled life.
Anna managed the whole little house for Miss Mathilda. It was a funny
little house, one of a whole row of all the same kind that made a close
pile like a row of dominoes that a child knocks over, for they were built
along a street which at this point came down a steep hill. They were
funny little houses, two stories high, with red brick fronts and long
white steps.
This one little house was always very full with Miss Mathilda, an under
servant, stray dogs and cats and Anna's voice that scolded, managed,
grumbled all day long.
"Sallie! can't I leave you alone a minute but you must run to the door to
see the butcher boy come down the street and there is Miss Mathilda
calling for her shoes. Can I do everything while you go around always
thinking about nothing at all? If I ain't after you every minute you
would be forgetting all, the time, and I take all this pains, and when you
come to me you was as ragged as a buzzard and as dirty as a dog. Go
and find Miss Mathilda her shoes where you put them this morning."
"Peter!",--her voice rose higher,--"Peter!",--Peter was the youngest and
the favorite dog,--"Peter, if you don't leave Baby alone,"--Baby was an
old, blind terrier that Anna had loved for many years,--"Peter if you
don't leave Baby alone, I take a rawhide to you, you bad dog."
The good Anna had high ideals for canine chastity and discipline. The
three regular dogs, the three that always lived with Anna, Peter and old
Baby, and the fluffy little Rags, who was always jumping up into the
air just to show that he was happy, together with the transients, the
many stray ones that Anna always kept until she found them homes,
were all under strict orders never to be bad one with the other.
A sad disgrace did once happen in the family. A little transient terrier
for whom Anna had found a home suddenly produced a crop of pups.
The new owners were certain that this Foxy had known no dog since
she was in their care. The good Anna held to it stoutly that her Peter
and her Rags were guiltless, and she made her statement with so much

heat that Foxy's owners were at last convinced that these results were
due to their neglect.
"You bad dog," Anna said to Peter that night, "you bad dog."
"Peter was the father of those pups," the good Anna explained to Miss
Mathilda, "and they look just like him too, and poor little Foxy, they
were so big that she could hardly have them, but Miss Mathilda, I
would never let those people know that Peter was so bad."
Periods of evil thinking came very regularly to Peter and to Rags and to
the visitors within their gates. At such times Anna would be very busy
and scold hard, and then too she always took great care to