Shimerda walking on the upland prairie with a gun over
his shoulder
Illustration: Mrs. Shimerda gathering mushrooms in a Bohemian forest
Illustration: Jake bringing home a Christmas tree
Illustration: Antonia ploughing in the field
Illustration: Jim and Antonia in the garden
Illustration: Lena Lingard knitting stockings
Illustration: Antonia driving her cattle home
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.
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