- Jim's Grandfather decided to move the family to Black Hawk.
- In August the Harlings' cook leaves and that's when Grandmother gets them to hire Antonia. She has to convince Ambrosch to let this happen. Mrs. Harlings rides out to the Shimerdas' farm one day to see Mrs. Shimerda. She likes Antonia and she thinks that Mrs. Shimerda is amusing. Antonia gets hired.
- Antonia comes to visit Jim in Black Hawk. Jim gets Jealous because Antonia is starting to like Charley Harling.
- The kids all tease Antonia about how much she likes Charley. They are in the process of making popcorn balls at the Harlings' when the door rings. It is a pretty, dressed-up girl named Lena Lingard. Jim almost doesn't recognize her, because she was a farm girl too at one point.
- We learn that Lena was supposed to marry a boy named Nick, except his father wouldn't allow it. Now Nick is marrying some other girl. Lena doesn't mind though, because she says she's seen a lot of married life and has decided she doesn't want it.
- Now that Lena is in town, Jim sees her a lot down at the stores. He often walks her home and she talks with him about what's going on in town.
- In the week before Christmas Jim finds Lena and her little brother Chris at the drugstore window. Chris came into town to do Christmas shopping for the family, and Lena is helping him pick out gifts. Jim joins them.
- Jim has a hard time even getting to school in the morning. He feels as though the winter is a punishment for their having enjoyed summer so much.
- When spring comes, everyone is happy. Jim and Tony help Mrs. Harling take care of her garden, and the kids play outside.
- Summer is coming, which narrator-Jim says will change everything.
- Trouble begins. Delivery boys who come to the Harlings' stay longer because they want to flirt with Antonia. Boys come to visit her to ask for dances. Sometimes the boys who walk her home on Saturday night wake Mr. Harling up with their voices.
- Jim hates Cutter and the way he looks. He has fake-looking white teeth and yellow whiskers. Jim implies that Cutter got two of the girls who worked with him pregnant.
- Once Ántonia leaves the Harlings, she becomes even more interested in partying. She always makes clothes with Lena's help, copying the fancy dresses of older, wealthy women in town. This makes these rich women upset.
- People in town start talking about how Jim is always hanging out with the hired girls. They think it's weird that he would rather hang out with them than town girls his own age.
- Antonia starts dating Larry Donovan, a passenger conductor and a bit of a player.
- One night when Larry is out of town, Jim walks Antonia home from the dance. He tells her to kiss him good night. She says sure.
- After they kiss, Ántonia chastises Jim for kissing her that way and threatens to tell his grandmother.
- Jim replies that Lena lets him kiss her that way.
- This upsets Ántonia. She doesn't want Lena to start something with Jim. Then she tells Jim that he has to go away to school and make something of his life. She tells him not to get mixed up with the Swedes.
- Jim tells her not to treat him like a kid. Ántonia laughs.
- One afternoon Jim finds his grandmother crying. Finally she admits that she knows that he's been sneaking out to the Firemen's dances.
- Many nights he walks Frances Harling home and talks to her about his plans for the future.
- Jim claims that if Frances were a boy she would act like him.
- Frances thinks that Jim sees the hired girls with rose-colored glasses. She calls him a Romantic and asks what his speech is going to be about at graduation.
- After graduation, Mrs. Harling tells Jim that the speech was great.
- Later, Jim gets a graduation present from her: a silk umbrella with his name on the handle.
- The next day Jim starts studying for college right away. That summer he learns trigonometry and Virgil. He memorizes long passages from the Aeneid.
- It's late August. The Cutters are going to Omaha for a few days. After they leave, Ántonia comes over to see the Burdens.
- Antonia explains to the Burdens how Wick is leaving for a few days, and how she is uncomfterable staying alone.
- Jim is arranged to sleep there for a few nights. The first couple nights goes fine, and on the third night, Jim is woken up by Wick beating him, thinking that he is sleeping with Antonia.
- Jim goes off to college in Lincoln, Nebraska. He gets a tutor he likes named Gaston Cleric, who is the head of the Latin department.
- For his first summer vacation Jim chooses to stay in Lincoln and get ahead on his studies again rather than go home. His tutor stays around, too, so the two of them spend a lot of time together.
- Narrator-Jim considers this period of his life to be one of the happiest in his life.
- It's March of Jim's sophomore year. The snow has been thawing and Jim is sitting with his window open in his room after supper. He's feeling lethargic.
- Jim looks at the blue sky outside his window. He sees the evening star.
- There is a knock at the door and Jim hurries to answer it.
- It is Lena Lingard. Jim hardly recognizes her. She's wearing a black suit and a black lace hat with blue flowers.
- Jim invites her to sit down in Cleric's chair. He is embarrassed, but she is not.
- When Jim goes to visit Lena he has to wait in the parlor. He's surprised that Lena is so successful because she isn't domineering and business-like. But she does have a great talent for making clothes and following fashion, though she never finishes anything on time and she always goes over budget. Jim thinks she is good with customers.
- Finally Jim tells her that he's going away, because he'll never get anything done if he sticks around here. Lena says she never should have started things with Jim. She muses that it was probably Ántonia telling her not to that made her want to do it.
- She gives Jim a good-bye kiss and says that she used to think she would be Jim's first sweetheart.
- After he leaves Lincoln Jim goes home to see his grandparents.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Time traveler: Book 2-4
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