urden.

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. I had lost
sight of her altogether, but Jim had found her again after long years, had
renewed a friendship that meant a great deal to him, and out of his busy
life had set apart time enough to enjoy that friendship. His mind was full
of her that day. He made me see her again, feel her presence, revived all
my old affection for her.

"I can't see," he said impetuously, "why you have never written anything
about Antonia."

I told him I had always felt that other people--he himself, for one--knew
her much better than I. I was ready, however, to make an agreement with
him; I would set down on paper all that I remembered of Antonia if he
would do the same. We might, in this way, get a picture of her.

He rumpled his hair with a quick, excited gesture, which with him often
announces a