My ÁntoniaAfter the death of her immigrant father, Antonia works as a servant for neighbors in the farmlands of Nebraska. She leaves for an unfortunate affair with an Irish railway conductor, but returns home, eventually marries and raises a large family in true pioneer style. |
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Æneid afternoon ain't Ambrosch Anna Antonia asked baby barn began Black Hawk Bohemian boys brought Charley clothes cornfields country girls cut bands Cutter Cuzak dance dark door dress drove Euchre eyes face farm father feel felt Firemen's Hall Frances Fuchs garden girls grandfather grandmother hair hands hard Harling head heard horses Jake and Otto Jelinek kitchen knew kolaches Krajiek laughed Lena Lingard Lena's lived looked loved married Marshall Field's morning mother Nebraska neighbors never night Nina Norwegian Ordinsky papa parlor Pavel Peter play prairie prairie dogs remember road seemed Shimerda shoulder sledge snow Squaw Creek Steavens stood stove summer supper talk tell things thought Tiny told tonia Tony took town trees turned wagon walked warm watched whispered wind windmill window winter woman yellow young Yulka
Popular passages
Page 8 - There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was 7 a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land : not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.
Page 361 - I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister — anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me."^She turned her bright, believing eyes to me, and the tears came up in them slowly.
Page 362 - ... thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world. In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could...
Page 14 - For the Lord most high is terrible ; he is a great King over all the earth. 3 He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet. 4 He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved.
Page 393 - Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not fade— that grew stronger with time. In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one's first primer: Antonia kicking her bare legs against the sides of my pony when we came home in triumph with our snake; Antonia in her black shawl and fur cap, as she stood by her father's grave in the snowstorm; Antonia coming in with her work-team along the evening sky-line. She lent herself to immemorial...
Page 248 - People's speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark.
Page 67 - For Antonia and me, the story of the wedding party was never at an end. We did not tell Pavel's secret to any one, but guarded it jealously — as if the wolves of the Ukraine had gathered that night long ago, and the wedding party been sacrificed, to give us a painful and peculiar pleasure.
Page 277 - In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disc; the handles, the tongue, the share — black against the molten red.
Page 380 - We turned to leave the cave; Antonia and I went up the stairs first, and the children waited. We were standing outside talking, when they all came running up the steps together, big and little, tow heads and gold heads and brown, and flashing little naked legs; a veritable explosion of life out of the dark cave into the sunlight.
Page 297 - This was not a boast, but a hope, at once bold and devoutly humble, that he might bring the Muse (but lately come to Italy from...