MELANCTHA––––––––
EACH ONE AS SHE MAY
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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 a while, anyway the child was dead and Rose and Sam her husband were very sorry but then these things came so often
