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1
Overview
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.
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 man, and his sympathetic, solicitous interest in women is as
youthful as it is Western and American.
During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept
returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had known
long ago and whom both of us admired. More than any other person we
remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions,
the whole adventure of our childhood. To speak her name was to call
up pictures of people and places, to set a quiet drama going in one's
brain.
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.
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 man, and his sympathetic, solicitous interest in women is as
youthful as it is Western and American.
During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept
returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had known
long ago and whom both of us admired. More than any other person we
remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions,
the whole adventure of our childhood. To speak her name was to call
up pictures of people and places, to set a quiet drama going in one's
brain.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940012308528 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | SAP |
| Publication date: | 04/18/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 210 KB |
About the Author
Willa Cather (1873-1948) is best known for her books O Pioneers! and My Antonia. She was born in Virginia and moved with her family to Nebraska before she was ten. This move later provided the setting for her best-known novels which focus on immigrant life on the prairie. As the Pulitzer Prize-winner for One of Ours, novelist, and writer of short fiction and poetry, Cather is known as a major American author.
Date of Birth:
December 7, 1873Date of Death:
April 27, 1947Place of Birth:
Winchester, VirginiaPlace of Death:
New York, New YorkEducation:
B.A., University of Nebraska, 1895From the B&N Reads Blog
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