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 in-
terest in women is as youthful as it is Western
and American.

During that burning day when we were cross-
ing 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 agree-
ment with him; I would set down on paper all

[[xii]]

f011 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ f012w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ f013

v?