My Ántonia | Page 5

found her again
after long years, had renewed a friendship that meant a great deal to
him, and out of his busy life had set apart time enough to enjoy that
friendship. His mind was full of her that day. He made me see her again,
feel her presence, revived all my old affection for her.
"I can't see," he said impetuously, "why you have never written
anything about Antonia."
I told him I had always felt that other people--he himself, for one knew
her much better than I. I was ready, however, to make an agreement
with him; I would set down on paper all that I remembered of Antonia
if he would do the same. We might, in this way, get a picture of her.
He rumpled his hair with a quick, excited gesture, which with him often
announces a new determination, and I could see that my suggestion
took hold of him. "Maybe I will, maybe I will!" he declared. He stared
out of the window for a few moments, and when he turned to me again
his eyes had the sudden clearness that comes from something the mind
itself sees. "Of course," he said, "I should have to do it in a direct way,

and say a great deal about myself. It's through myself that I knew and
felt her, and I've had no practice in any other form of presentation."
I told him that how he knew her and felt her was exactly what I most
wanted to know about Antonia. He had had opportunities that I, as a
little girl who watched her come and go, had not.
Months afterward Jim Burden arrived at my apartment one stormy
winter afternoon, with a bulging legal portfolio sheltered under his fur
overcoat. He brought it into the sitting-room with him and tapped it
with some pride as he stood warming his hands.
"I finished it last night--the thing about Antonia," he said. "Now, what
about yours?"
I had to confess that mine had not gone beyond a few straggling notes.
"Notes? I didn't make any." He drank his tea all at once and put down
the cup. "I didn't arrange or rearrange. I simply wrote down what of
herself and myself and other people Antonia's name recalls to me. I
suppose it hasn't any form. It hasn't any title, either." He went into the
next room, sat down at my desk and wrote on the pinkish face of the
portfolio the word, "Antonia." He frowned at this a moment, then
prefixed another word, making it "My Antonia." That seemed to satisfy
him.
"Read it as soon as you can," he said, rising, "but don't let it influence
your own story."
My own story was never written, but the following narrative is Jim's
manuscript, substantially as he brought it to me.

NOTES: [1] The Bohemian name Antonia is strongly accented on the
first syllable, like the English name Anthony, and the `i' is, of course,
given the sound of long `e'. The name is pronounced An'-ton-ee-ah.

BOOK I
The Shimerdas

I
I FIRST HEARD OF Antonia on what seemed to me an interminable
journey across the great midland plain of North America. I was ten
years old then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and
my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who
lived in Nebraska. I travelled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake
Marpole, one of the `hands' on my father's old farm under the Blue
Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jake's
experience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never
been in a railway train until the morning when we set out together to try
our fortunes in a new world.
We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy
with each stage of the journey. Jake bought everything the newsboys
offered him: candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, a watch-charm, and
for me a `Life of Jesse James,' which I remember as one of the most
satisfactory books I have ever read. Beyond Chicago we were under the
protection of a friendly passenger conductor, who knew all about the
country to which we were going and gave us a great deal of advice in
exchange for our confidence. He seemed to us an experienced and
worldly man who had been almost everywhere; in his conversation he
threw out lightly the names of distant states and cities. He wore the
rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders to which he
belonged. Even his cuff-buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, and
he was more inscribed than an Egyptian obelisk.
Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant