4. WILLA CATHER

When Willa Cather dedicated her first novel, _O Pioneers!_, to the
memory of Sarah Orne Jewett, she pointed out a link of natural piety
binding her to a literary ancestor now rarely credited with descendants
so robust. The link holds even yet in respect to the clear outlines and
fresh colors and simple devices of Miss Cather's art; in respect to the
body and range of her work it never really held. The thin, fine
gentility which Miss Jewett celebrates is no further away from the rich
vigor of Miss Cather's pioneers than is the kindly sentiment of the
older woman from the native passion of the younger. Miss Jewett wrote of
the shadows of memorable events. Once upon a time, her stories all
remind us, there was an heroic cast to New England. In Miss Jewett's
time only the echoes of those Homeric days made any noise in the
world--at least for her ears and the ears of most of her literary
contemporaries. Unmindful of the roar of industrial New England she
kept to the milder regions of her section and wrote elegies upon the
epigones.

In Miss Cather's quarter of the country there were still heroes during
the days she has written about, still pioneers. The sod and swamps of
her Nebraska prairies defy the hands of labor almost as obstinately as
did the stones and forests of old New England. Her Americans, like all
the Agamemnons back of Miss Jewett's world, are fresh from Europe,
locked in a mortal conflict with nature. If now and then the older among
them grow faint at remembering Bohemia or France or Scandinavia, this is
not the predominant mood of their communities. They ride powerfully
forward on a wave of confident energy, as if human life had more dawns
than sunsets in it. For the most part her pioneers are unreflective