The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Antonia, by Willa Cather

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Title: My Antonia

Author: Willa Cather

Release Date: July 8, 2008 [EBook #242]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY ANTONIA ***

Produced by Judith Boss, and Martin Robb

MY ANTONIA

By Willa Cather

CONTENTS

Introduction
BOOK I. The Shimerdas
BOOK II. The Hired Girls
BOOK III. Lena Lingard
BOOK IV. The Pioneer Woman's Story
BOOK V. Cuzak's Boys

TO CARRIE AND IRENE MINER In memory of affections old and true

Optima dies... prima fugit VIRGIL

INTRODUCTION

LAST summer I happened to be crossing the plains of Iowa in a season
of intense heat, and it was my good fortune to have for a traveling
companion James Quayle Burden--Jim Burden, as we still call him in the
West. He and I are old friends--we grew up together in the same Nebraska
town--and we had much to say to each other. While the train flashed
through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and
bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in
the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red
dust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind,
reminded us of many things. We were talking about what it is like to
spend one's childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and
corn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when the
world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairly
stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavy
harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is
stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one who had not
grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was a
kind of freemasonry, we said.

Although Jim Burden and I both live in New York, and are old friends, I
do not see much of him there. He is legal counsel for one of the great
Western railways, and is sometimes away from his New York office for
weeks together. That is one reason why we do not often meet. Another i