My Ántonia

Willa Sibert Cather

Informations

• Publié par: pheym
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 22
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Ántonia by Willa Sibert Cather

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Title: My Ántonia

Author: Willa Sibert Cather

Release Date: November 14, 2006 [Ebook 19810]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY ÁNTONIA***

My Ántonia

By Willa Sibert Cather

with illustrations by W. T. Benda

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Companys The Riverside Press Cambridge

1918

Optima dies … prima fugit Virgil

To Carrie and Irene Miner In memory of affections old and true

Contents

Introduction .

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. . . . Book I— The Shimerdas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

II . . . . . III . . . . IV . . . . V . . . . . VI . . . . VII . . . . VIII . . . IX . . . . X . . . . . XI . . . . XII . . . . XIII . . . XIV . . . XV . . . . XVI . . . XVII . . . XVIII . . XIX . . .

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Book II—The Hired Girls . . . . . . . . .

I . . . . . II . . . . . III . . . . IV . . . . V . . . . . VI . . . . VII . . . . VIII . . .

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IX . . . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . XI . . . . . . . . . . . XII . . . . . . . . . . . XIII . . . . . . . . . . XIV . . . . . . . . . . XV . . . . . . . . . . . Book III—Lena Lingard . I . . . . . . . . . . . . II . . . . . . . . . . . . III . . . . . . . . . . . IV . . . . . . . . . . .

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. . . . . . . . . . . . Book IV—The Pioneer Woman’s Story . . . . . . . .

I . . . . . . . . . . . . II . . . . . . . . . . . . III . . . . . . . . . . . IV . . . . . . . . . . . Book V—Cuzak’s Boys . . I . . . . . . . . . . . . II . . . . . . . . . . . . III . . . . . . . . . . .

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My Ãntonia

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Illustrations

Illustration: Immigrant family huddled together on the train platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Illustration: Mr. Shimerda walking on the upland prairie with a gun over his shoulder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Illustration: Mrs. Shimerda gathering mushrooms in a Bohemian forest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Illustration: Jake bringing home a Christmas tree . . . . . 69 Illustration: Ántonia ploughing in the field . . . . . . . . . 98 Illustration: Jim and Ántonia in the garden . . . . . . . . . 110 Illustration: Lena Lingard knitting stockings . . . . . . . . 134 Illustration: Ántonia driving her cattle home . . . . . . . . 239

Introduction

L AST 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. When Jim was still an obscure young lawyer, struggling to make his way in New York, his career was suddenly advanced by

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