Optima dies ... prima fugit
  VIRGIL
 
  INTRODUCTION

    LAST summer
         I happened
              to be
                  crossing the plains of Iowa
                       in a season
                           of intense heat,
           and it
            was my good fortune
              to have
                for a traveling companion
                       James Quayle Burden
          --Jim Burden,
           as we still
               call him in the West.

    He and
         I are old friends
           --we grew
               up together
                   in the same Nebraska town--
           and we
            had much
                  to say to each other.

    While the train
        flashed through never-ending miles
               of ripe wheat,
           by country towns
               and bright-flowered pastures
             and oak groves wilting
               in the sun,
         we sat
               in the observation car,
           where the woodwork
            was hot
                   to the touch
                       and red dust
                   lay deep over everything.

    The dust and heat,
           the burning wind,
         reminded us of many things.

    We were talking about
         what it is
             like to spend one's childhood
                   in little towns like these,
           buried in wheat and corn,
         under stimulating extremes of climate:
         burning summers
             when the world lies
                   green and billowy
                       beneath a brilliant sky,
           when one
            is fairly stifled in vegetation,
         in the color
               and smell of strong weeds
             and heavy harvests;
        blustery winters with little snow,
           when the whole country
            is stripped
             bare and gray as sheet-iron.

    We agreed that no one
         who had not
             grown up
                   in a little prairie town
            could know anything about it.

    It was a kind
           of freemasonry,
         we said.

    Although Jim Burden and
         I both live
               in New York,
           and are old friends,
         I do not
              see much of him there.

    He is legal counsel
           for one
               of the great Western railways,
           and is
              sometimes away
                   from his New York office
                 for weeks together.

    That is one reason
         why we
              do not often meet.

    Another is
         that I
              do not like his wife.

    When Jim was
         still an obscure young lawyer,
           struggling to make his way
               in New York,
         his career
            was suddenly
                  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,
         executive,
           but to me
             she seems unimpressionable
                and temperamentally 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 disposition.

    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.