Library and our collection over a number of years, both in our prior building on University Place and in this building where we moved in 1937 from the surviving charging records, we know that both cather and her partner, edith lewis, visited the and checked out quite a few books, both for research and for general reading. Our 2017 2018 exhibition, the new york world of willa cather uncovered a lot about cathers life in new york and her use of this library so feel free to speak to a staff member or take a look at our website to learn more will also continue our cathers sesquicentennial celebration with a special featuring Benjamin Taylor on his brand new biography, chasing bright uses a life of willa cather coming up on november 14th. Because of that historic connection. Were particularly honored evening to present this special event celebrating the sesquicentennial of cathers in cooperation with the National Willa Cather center. Our great to Peter Cipkowski from its board governors whos brought us this event. I will now hand the stage over him. Thank you and enjoy. Thank you. Good evening. Im with the National Weather center and im here with some of my colleagues. The center, particularly olsen, our executive director from red cloud, nebraska. We are so excited to be here to be partnering with the society library. Willa cather birthday is this december. And it is the 150th anniversary of her birth. In 1873. Its important to state, as sarah suggested, that will cather was a member of the library. She was a quintessential new yorker in the sense that she lived here most of her adult life down in the before migrating to the upper east side, she was a member of the library on University Place for those years when she was living in the village and later when it migrated here. In fact, she a good deal of research in this space, as many of you probably know and use the card catalog and theres a good deal of evidence here in the library that she researched a number of her books particular her last book saphira and the slave girl, which based on some memories memories she had of her childhood in virginia. As you may know, she migrated with her family to nebraska when she nine years old. And we know her, of course, for her nebraska novels primarily where she wrote so beautifully about the landscape up there. I id also like to point out that that willa cather brings a kind, unique american voice and kind of broke the code to speak. She followed her great Edith Wharton and henry, who were writing about very different themes that they were writing about, about aristocrats, folks who had european tours and so on. Willa cather about common people, the people that she grew up with and loved and and a way to express what it was to be quintessentially american through through her, through her novels. Tonights program is brought to you both by the National Willa Cather center and the New York Society Library. Just a word about we do at the center, which is based on red cloud willa cather hometown. Our mission is advance willa cather work, obviously, and to protect the Largest National nationally does a designated historical landmarks attached to one author in red cloud. So i encourage you to to come to red cloud and have a look around its extraordinary place and the center has a magnificent originally opera house where willa cather performed as a as a girl as well as an archive and a library and so on. But all that remains, i think, is to say thank you again for for being here. Its a special year for for the willa cather center. Thank you so much to the willa cather. Thank you. Thank you to the New York Society Library for for hosting us. And now i think it remains for to welcome our our actors Steve Routman and deanne lorette. Thanks to them for being here. Willa cather letter. Mrs. Stoll, age 14 august 31, 1888. Dear mrs. Stoll, when i received your letter, i was much i had begun to doubt your intention. Write School Begins monday and i suppose i shall go. But i do not feel buoyant over the prospect i have grown so attached to my work and my Little Laboratory where i have a dissecting outfit. Its hard to leave my animals here i am, miss heather govern there. I am a child and am that makes great difference with frail humanity. I have been stuffing birds are affectionate. William cather letter to louise pound age 20 june 29th, 1893. Dear louise morning your card just received another disappointment never mind, i am getting used to them now i will be into lincoln the fourth, fifth and 6th of july. You will be gone then again, fate. I dont know that. I should call to see you anyway. I have set my stipulations. You do not deign to say whether you intend coming down you return from chicago for Goodness Sake make up your mind then and come if you dont come consider matters eternally cut short next year it has been too a one sided game. I dont want to be under obligations to anyone, even you. How do come, my dear fellow, i cant help thinking you dont come because. Well you know why i have tried one whole year to a face that tried as hard as i ever tried to do anything. For mercy sake, come down and show me i am forgiven if you dont come at. Remember it is goodbye, will a letter to witter dinner age 33 february 24, 1906. Dear mr. Benner, thank you for returning my story, which i think i have been able to improve. You asked me my novel, indeed. You asked about it once before and i neglected. Answer your question. The truth is that i had not it out of the wrapper in which you sent it back me nor even opened it until some ago when i needed a piece of string and used the one which you had put it in your office. So you see that i have done absolutely nothing with it. It seems to be not quite bad enough to away and not quite good enough to wrestle with again. Therefore it reposes in my old. I do think it was most awfully zealous you to put in a word to mr. James and call his attention to my collection of stories. And i know that you must think his reply with your pains. Its such a personal communication, although its about something toward which he declares himself dead. Mr. I wish to acknowledge of the troll garden and to not reading it or intending to read it. Promiscuous fiction has become abhorrent to me and find it the hardest thing in the world to read almost any new novel. Any is hard enough, but the hardest from the innocent of young females and Young American females. Perhaps above all, this is a subject my battered, cynical all too expert outliving of such possibilities on which i could be eloquent, but i havent time and i will be more vivid and complete some other day. Ive only time now to say that i will then, in spite of these professions, do my best for miss cather so as not to be shamed by your so doing yours respects henry james. Mr. Jamess letter has given me a very keen kind of satisfaction for the attitude he admits is so exact which one would expect him to have. Ive always that he must feel just so its comforting all the same to have it from him in black and white if mr. James, one or two other men did not feel just as he affirms about, well it, would really break ones spirit, it would be a very deep personal hurt. Its. Un shrinking positiveness of his statement as to his estimation of the value of what he terms promiscuous. That makes mr. Jamess letter a kind of moral stimulant you shall see with what good grace i can stand up to whatever punishment he meets out to me in his second letter to have had the satisfaction of the first in anticipation a second letter. However, i certainly do ask your sympathy even he should refine upon his treatment in the light of the presupposed youth and innocence. The subject i feel a good deal as if i were about to undergo searching physical examination from whence i should come away with my formal unsuspecting confidence in the ordinary, dependable leanness of my forever shaken or, worse still with my doubts horribly confirmed, the prospect of his doing what he calls his best by me. Well, wouldnt know where you actually facing the prospect of such an attention have to whistle to keep up your so ill ask your sympathy beg you when you get his diagnosis as to let me have it faithfully and soon faithfully will as siebert cather the song of the lark part one heaven and old and spanish. Johnny celebrated christmas together riotously that one was unable to to her lesson. The next day in the middle of the vacation a week till you went to meet her piano threw a soft, beautiful snowstorm. The air a tender blue gray like the color of the doves that flew in and out of the white dove house on the post in the garden the sandhills looked dim and sleepy the tamarisk hedge was full of snow like a foam of blossoms drifted over it would tear open the gate. Old mrs. Koehler was just coming in from the chicken yard with five fresh eggs in her apron and a pair of top boots on her feet. She called tana to come and look at a bantam, which she held proudly. Her bantam hens were remiss in zeal, and she was always delighted when they accomplished anything. She took tea into the sitting room, very warm and smelling of food, and brought her a plate full of christmas cakes made according to old and hallowed formula, and put them before her while she warmed her feet. Then she went to the door of the kitchen stairs and called her voyage. Have. Heaven came down wearing an old wadded jacket with, a velvet collar. The silk was so worn the wadding stuck out almost everywhere. He avoided it to his eyes when he came in, knotted without and pointed directly the piano stool. He was not so upon the scales. As usual, and throughout the little sonata of mozart, she was studying, he remained languid and absent minded. His eyes looked very heavy, and he kept wiping with one of the new silk handkerchiefs hat landlady had given him for christmas. Taylor loitering on the stools stool reached for a tattered she had taken off the music rest when she sat down. It was a very old edition. The piano score of brooks or face. She turned over the pages curiously. Is it nice . She asked. Its the beautiful up ever once declared solemnly. You know, to story. Hey, how then she die . Orpheus went down below for his wife. Well, i know the story. I know there was an opera about it. Do people sing this now either . Yeah. What tells you like to try . See, he drew her from the stool and sat down at the piano, turning over leaves to the third act. He handed score to taylor. Listen, i play it through and youll the christmas i why that i feel he played through this lament then back his cups with awakening and nodded to taylor. Now one blacksmith meal. Oh, here. Oh is he there . All in all mind glue his room door. He would sang aria with much feeling. It was evidently one that was very dear him. No, im alone yourself. He played the introductory measures. I then nodded at her vehemently, and she began. He shot busy and oren. Her mind grew. I guess noone die in for of irish ball in very dicey chauffeur don been very chauffeur at and been when she finished one she nodded again sure, he muttered as he finished the accompaniment softly. It dropped his hands on his knees, looked up at taylor. That is fairly fine. He there is no such beautiful melody in the world. You take the book for one week and learn something to pass the time. It is good. Know all of you d t who ready . J ray for a little head on he . He sang softly, playing the melody with his right hand. Taylor, who was turning the pages of the third act, stopped and scowled at a passage the old germans eyes watched her curiously for what do you look so in your puckering up his own face youll see something a little difficult may be and youll make such a face like it wasnt. Taylor laughed, disconcerted. Well difficult things are, arent they, when you have to get them once lowered his head and threw it up as if he were something not too tall by means. He took the book from her and looked at it. Only one woman could sing that good punch on it is written for alto. You see a woman sings the part and there was only one to sing thats good in there, you understand . Only one. He glanced her quickly and lifted his red forefinger upright before her eyes. Taylor looked at that finger as she were hypnotized, only one, she asked breathlessly. Her hands hanging at her sides were opening and shutting rapidly. Once nodded and still held up that compelling finger when he dropped his hands, there was a look of satisfaction in his face, which she had very great vengeance, not it. Was she beautiful whom i began next at all. She was not so big mouth. Big teeth, no finger, nothing at all, a pole, a post but for the voice ah, she have something in there behind the eyes, tapping his temples to follow all his gesticulations intently. Was she german . Nor spanish, long, long chin and such sound . Did she die a long while ago . Di i think not. I never hear anyhow. I guess she is alive somewhere in. The world paris may be but old, of course i hear her when i was a youth she is too old to sing now anyway was she the greatest singer ever heard one . She nodded gravely. Quite so. She was the most. He hunted for the english word lifted, his hand over his head, and snapped his fingers noiselessly in the air, enunciating fiercely, could slip each. The words seemed to glitter in his uplifted hand. Voice was so full of emotion, which rose from the stool and began to button his water jacket, preparing to return to his half heated room in the loft. Taylor regretfully put on her cloak and hood and set out for home when finch looked for his late that afternoon, he found that taylor had not forgotten. Take it with her. He smiled at his loose sarcasm to smile and thoughtfully rubbed his stubby chin with his red fingers. When fritz came home in the early blue twilight, the snow was flying faster. Mrs. Koehler was cooking in the kitchen and the professor was seated at the piano, playing the cloak which he knew by heart. Old fritz took off his shoes quietly behind the stove and lay down on the lounge before his tapestry, where the firelight was playing over the walls of napoleon in moscow he listened while room grew darker and the windows duller wounded always came back to the same thing, he shot the sea, the lord in all mine gloom, his wound. He were oh, very new. He could bore. Then hed see, he saw all felt old and be in the hou the seashore of the old and you ready to do the teacher. From time to time . Fritz sighed softly. He too, had lost a eurydice. He my antonia, i first heard of antony on, what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland plain north america. I was ten years old then. I had lost both my father and within a year and my virginia were sending me out to my grandparent who lived in nebraska. I traveled in the care of jake, a mountain boy, one of the hands on my fathers old under the blue ridge, who was now going west to work for my grandfather. Jakes experience of the world was not much wider than mine he had never been in a railway until this morning when we set out together. Try our fortunes in a new world we went all the way in day coaches becoming more sticky and grimy with each stage of the journey. Jake bought everything. Newsboys offered him candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, a watch charm. And for me, a life of jesse james beyond chicago, we were under the protection of a friendly conductor who knew all the country to which we were going and gave us a great deal of advice and in exchange for our confidence, he seemed to us an experience stone worldly man who had been almost everywhere in his conversation, shaken, he threw out lightly the names of distant and cities. He wore the rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders to which he belonged. Even his cuff buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, he was more inscribed than an egyptian obelisk once, when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car ahead there was family from across the water whose destination was the same as ours. I do not remember crossing the Missouri River or anything about that long days through nebraska. Probably that time i had crossed so many rivers that was dull to them. The only thing very noticeable about nebraska was that it was still all day long. Nebraska nebraska. I had been sleeping curled up in a red plush seat for a long while when we reached black hawk, we stumbled down from the train into a wooden siding where men were running about with lanterns. I couldnt see any town or even distant lights. We were surrounded by, utter darkness. The engine was panting heavily after its long run in the red glow from the firebox, a group of people stood together on the platform, encumbered by bundles and boxes. I knew this must be the immigrant family, the conductor had told us about the woman wore a fringed shawl tied over her head and she carried a little tin trunk in her arms, hugging it as if were a baby. There. An old man, tall and stooped to have grown boys and a little girl clung to her mothers presently. A man with a lantern, approached them and begun to talk, shouting and exclaiming, i picked up my ears for it was positively the first time i ever heard a foreign. Another lantern came along, a bantering voice called out. Hello, are you mr. Burdens folks . If you are, its me youre looking for. Im otto. Im burdens hired man and im to drive you out. He told us we had long night drive ahead of us and wed better be on the hike. He us to a hitching bar where two farm wagons were tied and i saw the foreign family crowding into one of them. The other was for us. Jake got on the front seat with otto. I rode on the straw in the bottom of the wagon, covered up with a buffalo hide. The immigrants rumbled off into the empty darkness. And we followed them. I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite my tongue, and i soon began to ache all over cautiously. I from under the buffalo, hide got up on my knees, peered over the side of the wagon there, seemed to be nothing to see, no fences was no creaks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, 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. I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had gone over the edge of it and were outside mans juristic person. I had never before up the sky and there was not a familiar Mountain Ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven. All there was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there. They would still be looking for me at the sheepfold down by the creek or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures i had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on carrying me. I knew not whether i. I dont think i was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter between that earth and that sky, i felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers night here i felt what would be would be i do not remember our arrival at my grandfathers farm some time. But for daybreak, after a drive of nearly 20 miles with heavy work horse the road from the post office came directly by our door crossed the farmyard and curved around little pond beyond which it began climb the gentle swell of unbroken prairie the west there along the western skyline, it skirted a great cornfield, much larger than field i had ever seen seen. I had almost forgotten that i had a grandmother. She came out her sun bonnet on her head, a grain of sac in her hand, asked me if i did not want to go to the garden with her to dig potatoes for dinner. The garden was a quarter of a mile from the house and the way to it led up a shallow past, a cattle corral. I can remember exactly. The country looked to me as i walked beside my grandmother along the faint wagon tracks on that Early September morning. Perhaps the glide of a railway travel was still with me. For more. Anything else . I felt motion the landscape in fresh, easy blowing morning wind and in the earth as if the shaggy were a sort of loose hide and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping gallop gallop alone. I should have found the garden and i felt very little in it when i got there, i wanted to walk straight through the red grass and over the edge of the world which could not be very far away. Grandmother took the pitchfork we found standing in one of the rows and dug potato. Well, i picked them up out of the soft brown earth, put them into the bag. When grandmother was ready to go, i said, i should like to stay while i sat down in the middle of the garden where snakes could hardly approach unseen and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin. The the earth was warm under, me and warm as i crumbled it through my fingers i kept as still as i could now Nothing Happened happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it like the pumpkins. And i did not want to anything more. 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 when it comes to one, it comes as naturally asleep. The song of the lark, which was in bed for ten days during, which time he was gossiped about and even preached about in moonshine the baptist preacher, took a shot at a fallen man from his pulpit. Mrs. Livery johnson nodding approvingly from her pew. The mother of bunches. Pupils sent him notes informing him that their daughters would discontinue their music lessons. The old maid who had rented him piano sent the town dry. Her contaminated instrument and ever afterward declared that one had ruined its tone and scarred its glossy finish. The colors unremitting in their kindness to their friend, mrs. Koehler made him soups and broths stint and fritz repaired the dove house and mounted on a new post, lest it might be a sad reminder, as soon as wounds were strong to sit about in his slippers and water jacket, he told to bring him some stout thread from the shop. When fritz asked what he was going to sew, he produced the tattered score of orpheus and said he would like to fix it up for a little present. Fritz carried it over to the shop and stitched it into the pasteboard covered with dark suit and cloth. Over the stitches he glued a strip of thin red leather which he got from his friend. The harness after paulina had cleaned the pages, which i was amazed to see what a book he had. It opened stiffly, but that was meant to sitting in the arbor one morning under the ripe grapes and the brown curling leaves with a pen and ink on bench beside him. And the crooks on his knee, wunsch pondered for long while several times he dipped his pen in the ink and then put it back again in the cigar box in which mrs. Koehler kept her writing utensils. His thoughts wandered over wide territory, over countries and many years, and he frowned for a moment and looked at the book on his knee. He thought of a great many appropriate things to in it, but suddenly he rejected all of them. Open the book and at the top of the much engraved title page he wrote rapidly in purple ink and all wound to a wound moonstone. Colorado, september 30, 1895. Nobody in moonstone ever found ventures. First name was the a may have stood adam or or even. He got very angry. If anyone him he remained a foolish to the end of his chapter there when he presented score to taya, he told that in ten years she would either know what the inscription meant or she would not have the least idea, in which case it would not matter. When wunsch began to pack his trunk, both the colors were very he said. He was coming back someday, but that for the present since he had lost all his pupils, it would be better for him to some new town once would not go across the ravine to the town until he went to take the morning for denver. He said that after he got to denver would look around. He left moonshine one bright october morning without telling anyone goodbye. He brought his and went directly into smoking car when the train was beginning to pull out, he heard his name called, frantic, and looking out the window he saw taylor cronenberg standing in the siding bareheaded and panting some boys had brought word to that. They saw a bunch of trunk going over to the station and taya had run away from school. She was at the end of the station platform, her hair in two braids, her blue gingham dress wet to the knees because she run across lots through the weeds it had rained during the night and the tall sunflowers behind her were fresh and shining. Goodbye. Have lunch. Goodbye. She called, waving to him. He thrust his head out of the car window and called back, leaving civil. Leaving civil. Man killed. He watched her until train swept around the curve beyond the roundhouse and, then sank back into his seat, muttering she had been running. Oh, she will run along. They cannot stop her. What was it about the child that one believed in that night . Mrs. Brushed away many a tear and she got supper and set the table for two. Mrs. Stirred. Well, they sat down. Fritz, more silent than usual. Mrs. Koehler stirred, stirred her coffee and clattered spoon, but she had no for her supper. She felt for the first time in years that she was tired. Her own cooking. She looked across glass lamp at her husband and asked him if the butcher liked his new overcoat and whether he had got the shoulders right in a ready made suit. He was patching over for ray after fritz offered to wipe the for her, but she told him to go his business and, not to act as if she were sick or getting. When her work in the kitchen was done, she out to cover the oleander as against the frost and to take a last at her chickens. And as she came back from her henhouse, she stopped by one of the linden trees and stood resting her hand on the trunk. He would never come back. The poor man she knew he would drift on from newtown to newtown, from catastrophe to catastrophe he would hardly find good home for himself again. He would die at last in some rough place and be buried in the desert or on the wind prairie, far from any linden tree fritz was smoking his pipe, the kitchen doorstep watched his paulina and guessed her thoughts. He too was sorry to lose his friend, but fritz was getting old. He had lived a long while and had learned to lose without struggle. Old mrs. Old mrs. Harris did not really die that night, but she believed she did mandy found her unconscious in the morning. Then there was a great stir bustle. But grandmother was out of all of it. Never knew that she the object of so much attention and excitement she died a little while after mr. Templeton got home. Thus, mrs. Harris slipped out of the templeton story. But victoria and vicki had still to go on to follow the long road that leads through things and guessed at and unforeseeable. When they are old, they will come closer and closer to grandma harris. They will think a great deal about her and remember things, and their lot will be more or less like hers. They will regret that they hated her so little, but they too will look into the eager, unseeing eyes of a young and feel themselves alone. They will say to themselves i was heartless because i was young and wanted things so much. But now i know a lost lady. He had seen the end of an era, the sunset of the pioneer. He had come upon it when already. Its glory was nearly spent so in the buffalo times. A traveler to come up upon the embers of a hunters fire on the prairie. After the hunter was up and gone the coals would be trampled out. But the ground was warm and the flat and grass where he had slept and where his pony had told the story. This was the very end of the road making west the men who had put and mountains under the iron harness old and some were poor, and even the successful ones were hunting for a rest. And a brief reprieve from death. It was already gone that age. Nothing could ever bring it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men had seen the air and followed these had caught in a kind of afterglow in their own faces. And this would always be his. The song the lark, so many stupid faces tell you it was sitting by the window, our studio waiting for him to come back, lunch on her knee was the latest illustrated musical journal in which musicians great and a little stridently advertise their wares. Every afternoon she played accompaniments for people who looked and smiled like these in the afternoon was teach professionals and taught as advanced. It was his theory. Taylor ought to be able to learn a great deal by keeping her ears open while she played for them. The concert going public of chicago still remembers long, sallow disc, contented face of madison. He seldom missed Evening Concert and was usually to be seen somewhere at the back of the concert, reading a newspaper and conspicuously ignoring the efforts of the performers at the end of a number, he looked up from his paper long enough to sweep the applauding audience with a contemptuous eye. Bowers had all the qualities which go to make a good teacher except generosity and warmth. His intelligence was of a high order. His taste never at fault. He seldom worked with a voice without improving it. And in teaching the delivery of oratorio he was without a rival, singers came from far near to study bach and handel with him even the fashionable sopranos and contralto of chicago st paul and st louis. They were usually ladies with very rich husbands, humbly endured his sardonic for the sake of what he could do for them. He was not at all above helping a very lame singer across if her husbands checkbook warranted it. He had a whole bag of tricks for stupid people. Life. He called them cheap repairs for a cheapen he used to say, but the husbands never found the repairs very cheap. The soloists to chicago to coach with bowers and he took long journeys to hear an instructor chorus. He was intensely avaricious and from these semipro he reaped a golden harvest. They fed his pockets and they fed his ever hunger contempt, his scorn of himself, of his accomplices. The more money he made, the more parsimonious he became. He had first been interested in a kronberg of her bluntness. Her country roughness and her manifest carefulness about money. For the first time, i had a friend who in his own cool and guarded, liked her for what was least in her tale, was still looking at the musical paper. When bowers sauntered in i may cut my lesson out tomorrow, mr. Bowers, i to hunt a new boarding place. Bowers looked up languidly from his desk, where he had begun to go over a pile of letters. Whats the matter with the studio club . Been fighting with them again. The clubs all right for people who like to live that way. I dont. Bowers lifted his eyebrows. Why so temporary . He asked. I cant work with a lot of girls around. Theyre too familiar. I never could get along with girls of my own age. Its all too chummy. Gets on my nerves. I didnt come here to play kindergarten till i began energetically arrange the scattered music on the piano. Bowers grimaced. Goodhue let her over the three checks he was pinning together. He liked to play it a rough game, banter with her. He flattered himself that he had made her harsher than she was when she first came to him, that he had got off a little of the sugar coating on pupil, the art of making yourself agreeable never comes amiss. Ms. Kronberg i should say you rather need a little practice along that line when you come to marketing your in the world a little smoothness goes further than a great deal of talent. Sometimes if you happen to be cursed with a real, then youve got to be very smooth indeed or youll never get money back. Our snapped the elastic band around his notebook tire gave him a sharp recognizing glance. Well, thats the money ill have to go without. She. Powers rose and closed his desk. Mrs. Priest is late again, by the way. Miss crone. But remember, not to frown when you are playing for, mrs. Priest. You did not yesterday. You mean when she hits a tone with her breath like that . Why do you let her. You wouldnt let me. Who . I certainly not. But that is a mannerism of mrs. Priests. The public like it and they pay a great deal of money for the pleasure of hearing her do. Oh, there she is. Remem ber bowers, the door of the Reception Room and a tall imposing woman rustled in, bringing with her a glow of animation which, pervaded the room as if a half dozen persons all talking gaily had come in instead of one. She was large, handsome, expansive. One felt this the moment she crossed the she shown with care, cleanliness, mature vigor, unchallenged authority, gracious, good humor, and abso lute confidence in her person, her powers, her position and her way of life. A glowing, overwhelming only to be found where Human Society is young and strong and without yester days. Her face had a kind of a heavy, thoughtless beauty, like a pink peony, just at the point of beginning to fade. Her brown hair was waved in front and done up behind. In a great twist held by a tortoiseshell comb with gold. She wore a beautiful green hat with three long feathers sticking straight in front. A little cape made of velvet and fur with a yellow satin rose on it. Her gloves, her shoes, her veil. Somehow made themselves felt. She gave the impression of, wearing a cargo of splendid merchandise. Mrs. Not as graciously to tell you coquettishly to devours and asked him to untie her veil her she threw her splendid on a chair. The yellow lining till she was already at the piano. Mrs. Priest stood, behind her rejoice greatly. First, please, and please hurry it in there. She put her arm over her shoulder and indicated the passage by a sweep of her white glove. She threw out her chest, clasped her hands, her abdomen lifted her chin or the muscles of her cheeks back and forth for a moment, and then began with conviction. Rejoice rejoice. Bowers paced the room with his catlike when he checked mrs. Priest vehement at all, he handled her roughly poked, hammered her massive person with cold, satisfied action, almost as if he were taking out a grudge on his splendid creation. Such treatment, the imposing lady did not at all resent. She tried harder and harder. Her eyes growing, all the while more lustrous, and her lips redder to on as she was told, ignoring singers struggles when she first heard mrs. Priest sing in church. You admired her since she had found out how dull the good natured soprano really was. She felt a deep contempt for her. She felt that mrs. Priest to be approved and even punished for her shortcomings, that she ought to be exposed, at least to herself and not be permitted to live and shine happy ignorance of what a poor thing it was brought across so radiantly to his cold looks of reproof were lost upon mrs. Priest. The lady did murmur. One day, when took bowers home in her carriage. How handsome your afternoon moon girl would be if she did not have that unfortunate squint. It gives her that vacant sweet look like an animal that amused bowers. He liked to watch the germination and growth of antipathies. One of ours 1923 by the banks of lovely creek where it all began. Claude wheelers still goes on to the two old women who Work Together in the farmhouse. The thought of him is always there beyond everything else. At the farthest edge of consciousness, like the evening sun on the horizon. Mrs. Wheeler got the word of his death one afternoon in the sitting room the room in which she had paid her goodbye. She was when the telephone rang. Is this the wheeler farm . This is the telegraph office. We have a message from the war department. The voice hesitated. Isnt mr. Wheeler there . No. But you can read the message to me. Mrs. Wheeler said thank you and hung up the receiver. She felt her way softly to the chair. She had an hour alone when there was nothing but him, the room but him and. The map of germany. There, which was the end of his road. Somewhere among those perplexing names. He had found his. Claudes letters kept for weeks afterwards. Then came the letters from his comrades and his colonel to tell her all in the dark months followed when human looked to her uglier than it had ever before. Those letters were wheelers comfort, and she read the newspapers. She used to think about the passage of the red sea in the bible. It seemed as if the flood meanness and greed had been held back just long enough for the boys to go over. And then swept down and engulfed everything that was left at home. When she can see nothing that has come of it. But evil. She reads claudes letters again and reassures for him the call was clear. The cause was glorious. Never a doubt stained his bright faith. She divined so much that he did not write. She knows what to read into those short flashes of enthusiasm. How fully he must have found his life before he could let himself go so far. He who was so afraid of being fooled. He died believing his own country better than it is. And france better than any country can ever be. And those were beautiful to die with. Perhaps it was as well. See that vision. And then to see more. She would have dreaded the awakening. She sometimes even doubts whether he could borne at all that last desolated disappointment. One by one, the heroes that war, the men of dazzling soldiers ship leave premature the world. They have come back to ere men whose deeds were tales wonder officers whose names made the blood of the youth beat faster survivors of an credible dangers. One by one, they quietly, by their own hand. Some do it in obscure lodging houses, some in their offices where they seem to be carrying on their business like. Like other men. Some slip over a vessel side disappear when claudes mother hears of these things, shudders and presses her hands tight over her breast as if she had him there. She feels as if god had saved him from some horrible suffering, some horrible end. For as she. She thinks those slaves of themselves were so like him. They were the ones who had hoped extravagantly, who in order to do what they did, had to hope extravagantly to believe passionately. And they found they had hoped and believed too much may lie when they were alone. Sometimes addresses mrs. Is mother. Now mother, you go upstairs and lay down and rescue yourself. Mrs. Wheeler knows that that. Then she is thinking of claude. Is for claude as they are working at the table or bending over the oven. Something reminds them of him and they think of him together together like one person may. Haley will pat her on the back and say never you mind, mother, youll see your boy yonder. Mrs. Wheeler always feels god is near, but may. Haley is not troubled by knowledge of interstellar spaces, and for her he is nearer still directly overhead, not so very far above the kitchen stove. Lucy gayheart in little towns lives all along so close to one another, loves and hates beat about their wings, almost touching on the sidewalks along which everybody comes and goes. You must, at some pass within a few inches of the man who cheated and betrayed you or the woman you desire. More than anything else in the world you say good morning and go on. It is a close shave out in the world. The escapes not so narrow. When he came out of the house the last intense light of the winter day was pouring over the town below him and the treetops and the Church Steeples gleamed like copper. After all, he was. He would never go away from haverford. He had been through too much here. What was a mans home town, anyway . But the place where he had learned had disappointments and had learned to bear them. On august 24th, 1984, the day before his death at 59 from a probable overdose of pills, Truman Capote started this reminiscence. All of my really lives are southern. Either from new orleans or the Rural Regions of alabama. At least 40 of the men and possibly more died during the civil war, including my great grandfather father long ago when i was ten or thereabouts. I became interested in these Fallen Soldiers because i had read a large collection of their battlefield letters that our family had to keep. I was already interested in writing. In fact, had published small essays and stories. Scholastic magazine and i decided to write historical book based the letters of these confederate heroes. Troubles interfered. It was not until eight years later when i was barely as a very Young Journalist living in new york, that the subject of my civil war kinfolk revived. Lived. Of course, a great lot of research was necessary. The place i chose to do research was the new york library for several reasons one being that it was winter and this particular place war and clean and situated off park avenue provided cozy haven the whole day long. Also, perhaps because of its location the staff and client were a comfort in themselves. A bunch of upper wellmannered literati. Some of the customers i saw frequently at the library were more than that. Especially the blue eyed lady. Her eyes were the pale blue of a prairie dawn. On a clear day. Also, there was something wholesome and countrified about her face. And it was not just an absence. Cosmetics. She an ordinary height. And of a solid, but not overly solid. Her clothing was composed of an unusual but somehow attractive combination of materials. She wore low heeled shoes and thick stockings. And a handsome turquoise necklace. Went well with her soft tweed suits. Her hair was black and white and crisply, almost. Lee cut the surprising dominant factor was a beautiful sable, which she almost never took off. It was a good she had it. On the day of the store when i left the library around 4 00, it looked as though north pole had moved to new york. Fist sized snowballs pummeled the air. The blue eyed lady wearing a rich, stable coat, was standing at the curb. She was trying to hail taxi. I decided to help her. But there were no taxis view. Indeed, very little traffic said. Maybe the drivers have gone home. It doesnt. It doesnt matter. I live not too far from. Her deep, soft voice drifted toward me through the heavy snow. So i ask then may walk you home. She. We walked along along madison avenue until we a long champs restaurant. She said i could use. A cup of tea, could you . I said yes, but once we were settled at the table, i ordered a double martini. She laughed and asked if i was old enough to drink, whereupon i told her about myself. My age. The fact i was born in new orleans and that i was an aspiring writer. Really . What writers did you admire . Obviously she was not a new yorker. She had a western accent. Flo bear to gain proust. Charles dickens, e and forrester. Conan doyle maupassant. She laughed. Well, you certainly varied, except arent any american writers you care for. Like who . Vaughan jewett. Edith wharton. Miss jewett wrote one good book, the country of the point. It first, and Edith Wharton wrote one good book, the of mirth. But i like henry james. Mark twain, melville and love. Willa cather. My anthony death comes for the archbishop. Have you ever read her marvelous tune . Novellas a last lady and my mortal enemy . Yes. She sipped her tea and put the cup down with a slightly nervous gesture. She seemed to be turning something over her mind. I ought to tell. She paused, then, in a rushing voice, more, less whispered. I wrote those books. I was stunned. How could i have been so stupid . I had a photograph of her in my bedroom. Of course she was willa cather those flawless like eyes, the bobbed hair, the square face with a firm chin. I hovered between laughter, tears. There was no living person i would have met. No who could have so impressed me. Not garbo or gandhi or einstein or churchill or stalin. Nobody she apparently realized that, and we were both left speechless. I swallowed my double in one gulp. But soon we were on the street again. We trudged through the snow until we arrived at an expensive Old Fashioned address on park avenue. She said, well, here is where i live. Then suddenly added, if youre free for dinner on thursday, ill expect at 7 00. And please bring some of your writing. Id like to read it. Yes. I was thrilled. I bought a new suit and, retype three of my short stories, and come thursday, i was on her doorstep promptly at seven. I was still amazed to think that willa cather wore sable and occupied a park avenue apartment. I always imagined her as living on a quiet street in red cloud, nebraska. The apartment did not have many rooms, but they were large rooms, which she shared with lifelong companion someone her size and age, a discreet, elegant woman named edith. Macarthur. And miss lewis was so alike. One could be certain they had decorated the apartment together. There were flowers everywhere. Masses of winter lilac peonies and lavender colored roses. Beautifully bound. Books lined all the walls of the living room. My darling edith, i am sitting in your looking out on the woods know so well every delights me. I am ashamed of my appetite for food. And as for sleep, i had forgotten that sleeping can be an active, physical pleasure. I wake up saturated with the pleasure of breathing Clear Mountain air, of being up high, all the woods below me, sleeping in still white moonlight. One hour from now, out of your window i shall see a sight unpaid paralleled jupiter and venus both shining in the golden rosy sky and both in the west from 530 to 630, they of a superb splendor. Deepening in color in a still daylight sky. Guiltless of other stars. The moon not up and the sun gone down. Those two above and the whole fault of heaven. I cant believe that all that majesty and beauty, all those unfailing appearance is and exits are more than just martin maddox. And horrible temperatures. If they are not, then we are the only wonder of all things because we can wonder. I have worn my white silk suit almost constantly with no white hat, which is awkward. Everything you packed carried wonderfully. Not a wrinkle. Now i must dress to receive the planets, dear, as i wont wish. Take time after they appear and planets will not wait lovingly. W i dont know when i have enjoyed jupiter so as this summer at the end. Well well good morning everybody. Im of the American Enterprise institute. Its my great pleasure to welcome you to a set of conversations today. Democracy and, the american