own
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.

NOTE: 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 c