My Ántonia By Willa Sibert Cather Optima dies … prima fugit Virgil with illustrations by W. T. Benda [Illustration: The Riverside Press] Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Companys The Riverside Press Cambridge 1918 To Carrie and Irene Miner _In memory of affections old and true_ CONTENTS Introduction Book I— The Shimerdas II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX Book II—The Hired Girls I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV Book III—Lena Lingard I II III IV Book IV—The Pioneer Woman’s Story I II III IV Book V—Cuzak’s Boys I II III ILLUSTRATIONS Illustration: Immigrant family huddled together on the train platform Illustration: Mr. Shimerda walking on the upland prairie with a gun over his shoulder Illustration: Mrs. Shimerda gathering mushrooms in a Bohemian forest Illustration: Jake bringing home a Christmas tree Illustration: Ántonia ploughing in the field Illustration: Jim and Ántonia in the garden Illustration: Lena Lingard knitting stockings Illustration: Ántonia driving her cattle home 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 is that I do not like his wife.