MY ANTONIA
I had to confess that mine had not gone beyond a few straggling notes.
"Notes? I didn't make any." He drank his tea all at once and put down the cup. "I didn't arrange or rearrange. I simply wrote down what of herself and myself and other people Ántonia'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, "Ántonia." He frowned at this a moment, then prefixed another word, making it "My Ántonia." 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.
xiv
