{"product_id":"2940012308528","title":"MY ANTONIA","description":"INTRODUCTION\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLAST summer I happened to be crossing the plains of Iowa in a season\u003cbr\u003eof intense heat, and it was my good fortune to have for a traveling\u003cbr\u003ecompanion James Quayle Burden--Jim Burden, as we still call him in the\u003cbr\u003eWest. He and I are old friends--we grew up together in the same Nebraska\u003cbr\u003etown--and we had much to say to each other. While the train flashed\u003cbr\u003ethrough never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and\u003cbr\u003ebright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in\u003cbr\u003ethe observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red\u003cbr\u003edust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind,\u003cbr\u003ereminded us of many things. We were talking about what it is like to\u003cbr\u003espend one's childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and\u003cbr\u003ecorn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when the\u003cbr\u003eworld lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairly\u003cbr\u003estifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavy\u003cbr\u003eharvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is\u003cbr\u003estripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one who had not\u003cbr\u003egrown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was a\u003cbr\u003ekind of freemasonry, we said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlthough Jim Burden and I both live in New York, and are old friends, I\u003cbr\u003edo not see much of him there. He is legal counsel for one of the great\u003cbr\u003eWestern railways, and is sometimes away from his New York office for\u003cbr\u003eweeks together. That is one reason why we do not often meet. Another is\u003cbr\u003ethat I do not like his wife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Jim was still an obscure young lawyer, struggling to make his way\u003cbr\u003ein New York, his career was suddenly advanced by a brilliant marriage.\u003cbr\u003eGenevieve Whitney was the only daughter of a distinguished man. Her\u003cbr\u003emarriage with young Burden was the subject of sharp comment at the time.\u003cbr\u003eIt was said she had been brutally jilted by her cousin, Rutland Whitney,\u003cbr\u003eand that she married this unknown man from the West out of bravado. She\u003cbr\u003ewas a restless, headstrong girl, even then, who liked to astonish\u003cbr\u003eher friends. Later, when I knew her, she was always doing something\u003cbr\u003eunexpected. She gave one of her town houses for a Suffrage headquarters,\u003cbr\u003eproduced one of her own plays at the Princess Theater, was arrested\u003cbr\u003efor picketing during a garment-makers' strike, etc. I am never able to\u003cbr\u003ebelieve that she has much feeling for the causes to which she lends her\u003cbr\u003ename and her fleeting interest. She is handsome, energetic, executive,\u003cbr\u003ebut to me she seems unimpressionable and temperamentally incapable of\u003cbr\u003eenthusiasm. Her husband's quiet tastes irritate her, I think, and she\u003cbr\u003efinds it worth while to play the patroness to a group of young poets and\u003cbr\u003epainters of advanced ideas and mediocre ability. She has her own fortune\u003cbr\u003eand lives her own life. For some reason, she wishes to remain Mrs. James\u003cbr\u003eBurden.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs for Jim, no disappointments have been severe enough to chill his\u003cbr\u003enaturally romantic and ardent disposition. This disposition, though it\u003cbr\u003eoften made him seem very funny when he was a boy, has been one of the\u003cbr\u003estrongest elements in his success. He loves with a personal passion the\u003cbr\u003egreat country through which his railway runs and branches. His faith\u003cbr\u003ein it and his knowledge of it have played an important part in its\u003cbr\u003edevelopment. He is always able to raise capital for new enterprises in\u003cbr\u003eWyoming or Montana, and has helped young men out there to do remarkable\u003cbr\u003ethings in mines and timber and oil. If a young man with an idea can once\u003cbr\u003eget Jim Burden's attention, can manage to accompany him when he goes off\u003cbr\u003einto the wilds hunting for lost parks or exploring new canyons, then the\u003cbr\u003emoney which means action is usually forthcoming. Jim is still able to\u003cbr\u003elose himself in those big Western dreams. Though he is over forty now,\u003cbr\u003ehe meets new people and new enterprises with the impulsiveness by which\u003cbr\u003ehis boyhood friends remember him. He never seems to me to grow older.\u003cbr\u003eHis fresh color and sandy hair and quick-changing blue eyes are those\u003cbr\u003eof a young man, and his sympathetic, solicitous interest in women is as\u003cbr\u003eyouthful as it is Western and American.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept\u003cbr\u003ereturning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had known\u003cbr\u003elong ago and whom both of us admired. More than any other person we\u003cbr\u003eremembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions,\u003cbr\u003ethe whole adventure of our childhood. To speak her name was to call\u003cbr\u003eup pictures of people and places, to set a quiet drama going in one's\u003cbr\u003ebrain.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47180808978672,"sku":"2940012308528","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012308528_p0.jpg?v=1763567267","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012308528","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}