My Ántonia

by Willa Cather

I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.

All the way home grandmother and Jake talked about how easily good Christian people could forget they were their brothers’ keepers. “I will say, Jake, some of our brothers and sisters are hard to keep. Where’s a body to begin, with these people? They’re wanting in everything, and most of all in horse-sense.

He read the chapters from Saint Matthew about the birth of Christ, and as we listened, it all seemed like something that had happened lately, and near at hand.

“Have the last word, ma’m,” he said cheerfully. “It’s a lady’s privilege.”

Everything she said seemed to come right out of her heart.

I was moody and restless that winter, and tired of the people I saw every day.

Her warm, sweet face, her kind arms, and the true heart in her; she was, oh, she was still my Ántonia!

Out in the stream the sandbars glittered like glass, and the light trembled in the willow thickets as if little flames were leaping among them.