II

Mahailey and the Dandelions
From an original oil
"...and from under the dead weeds and wisps of dried bluestem, the dandelions thrust up their clean, bright faces; the acrid smell made him think of Mahailey, who had probably been out this very morning, gauging the sod with her broken butcher-knife and stuffing dandelion greens into her apron. She always went for greens with an air of secrecy, very early, and sneaked along the roadsides stooping close to the ground as if the dandelions were wild things and had to be caught sleeping."
Inspired by Willa Cather's One of Ours

III

Moonlit Roads
From an original oil
"Nothing in the world, not snow mountains or blue seas, is so beautiful in moonlight as the soft, dry summer roads in a farming country, roads where the white dust falls back from the slow wagon-wheel."
Inspired by Willa Cather's Two Friends

IV

Painted Windows
From an original oil
"...the painted glass windows shone out at us as we came along the frozen street. In the winter bleakness a hunger for colour came over people, like the Laplander's craving for fats and sugar. We used to linger on the sidewalk outside the church when the lamps were lighted early for choir practice for prayer-meeting, shivering and talking until our feet were lumps of ice. The crude reds and greens and blues of that coloured glass held us there."
Inspired by Willa Cather's My Ántonia

V

Summer, Beautiful Summer
From an original oil
"It was in summer that one really lived. Then all the little overcrowded houses were opened wide, and the wind blew through them with sweet, earthly smells of garden-planting. The town looked as if it had just been washed. People were out painting their fences. The cottonwood trees were a-flicker with sticky, yellow little leaves, and the feathery tamarisks were in pink bud."
Inspired by Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark

VI

Out to the Gayhearts
from an original oil
"People said 'out to the Gayhearts' and thought it rather a long walk in summer. But Lucy covered the distance a dozen times a day, covered it quickly with that walk so peculiarly her own, like an expression of irrepressible light heartedness; a mere white figure under the flickering shade of the early trees. On she came, past hedges and lilac bushes and woolly-green grape arbours and rows of jonquils, and one knew she was delighted with everything; with her summer clothes and the air and the sun and the blossoming world."
Inspired by Willa Cather's Lucy Gayheart

VII

Beside the Red Brick Wall
From an original oil
"Every evening when he came back to the store after supper, Dillon had one of his clerks bring two arm-chairs out to the wide sidewalk that ran beside the red brick wall. In these chairs the two friends would spend the evening. I often sat on the edge of the sidewalk with my feet hanging down and played jacks by the hour when there was moonlight. I suppose there were moonless nights; but I remember them all as flooded by the rich indolence of a full moon, or a half-moon set in uncertain blue."
Inspired by Willa Cather's Two Friends