Black poetry

Willa Cather, My Antonia
denly advanced by a brilliant marriage. Genevieve
Whitney was the only daughter of a distinguished man.
Her marriage with young Burden was the subject of
sharp comment at the time. It was said she had been
brutally jilted by her cousin, Rutland Whitney, and that
she married this unknown man from the West out of
bravado. She was a restless, headstrong girl, even then,
who liked to astonish her friends. Later, when I knew
her, she was always doing something unexpected. She
gave one of her town houses for a Suffrage headquarters,
produced one of her own plays at the Princess Theater,
was arrested for picketing during a garment-makers'
strike, etc. I am never able to believe that she has much
feeling for the causes to which she lends her name and
her fleeting interest. She is handsome, energetic, execu-
tive, but to me she seems unimpressionable and temper-
amentally incapable of enthusiasm. Her husband's quiet
tastes irritate her, I think, and she finds it worth while
to play the patroness to a group of young poets and
painters of advanced ideas and mediocre ability. She has
her own fortune and lives her own life. For some reason,
she wishes to remain Mrs. James Burden.
As for Jim, no disappointments have been severe
enough to chill his naturally romantic and ardent disposi-
tion. 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 per-
sonal passion the great country through which his rail-
way 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 Bur-
den'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 usu-
ally 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 impul-
siveness by which his boyhood friends remember him