s
that I do not like his wife.

When Jim was still an obscure young lawyer, struggling to make his way
in New York, his career was suddenly advanced by a brilliant marriage.
Genevieve Whitney was the only daughter of a distinguished man. Her
marriage with young Burden was the subject of sharp comment at the time.
It was said she had been brutally jilted by her cousin, Rutland Whitney,
and that she married this unknown man from the West out of bravado. She
was a restless, headstrong girl, even then, who liked to astonish
her friends. Later, when I knew her, she was always doing something
unexpected. She gave one of her town houses for a Suffrage headquarters,
produced one of her own plays at the Princess Theater, was arrested
for picketing during a garment-makers' strike, etc. I am never able to
believe that she has much feeling for the causes to which she lends her
name and her fleeting interest. She is handsome, energetic, executive,
but to me she seems unimpressionable and temperamentally incapable of
enthusiasm. Her husband's quiet tastes irritate her, I think, and she
finds it worth while to play the patroness to a group of young poets and
painters of advanced ideas and mediocre ability. She has her own fortune
and lives her own life. For some reason, she wishes to remain Mrs. James
Burden.

As for Jim, no disappointments have been severe enough to chill his
naturally romantic and ardent disposition. This disposition, though it
often made him seem very funny when he was a boy, has been one of the
strongest elements in his success. He loves with a personal passion the
great country through which his railway runs and branches. His faith
in it and his knowledge of it have played an important part in its
development. He is always able to raise capital for new enterprises in
Wyoming or Montana, and has helped young men out there to do remarkable
things in mines and timber and oil. If a young man with an idea can once
get Jim Burden's attention, can manage to accompany him when he goes off
into the wilds hunting for lost parks or exploring new canyons, then the
money which means action is usually forthcoming. Jim is still able to
lose himself in those big Western dreams. Though he is over forty now,
he meets new people and new enterprises with the impulsiveness by which
his boyhood friends remember him. He never seems to me to grow older.
His fresh color and sandy hair and quick-changing blue eyes are those
of a young m