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Updated: May 10, 2025
He told me he had a nice “lady-teacher” and that he liked to go to school. At dinner grandfather talked to Jelinek more than he usually did to strangers. “Will they be much disappointed because we cannot get a priest?” he asked. Jelinek looked serious. “Yes, sir, that is very bad for them. Their father has done a great sin,” he looked straight at grandfather. “Our Lord has said that.”
Jake and Jelinek went ahead on horseback to cut the body loose from the pool of blood in which it was frozen fast to the ground. When grandmother and I went into the Shimerdas’ house, we found the women-folk alone; Ambrosch and Marek were at the barn. Mrs. Shimerda sat crouching by the stove, Ántonia was washing dishes.
'Will they be much disappointed because we cannot get a priest? he asked. Jelinek looked serious. 'Yes, sir, that is very bad for them. Their father has done a great sin' he looked straight at grandfather. 'Our Lord has said that. Grandfather seemed to like his frankness. 'We believe that, too, Jelinek. But we believe that Mr.
Grandfather asked Jelinek whether in the old country there was some superstition to the effect that a suicide must be buried at the cross-roads. Jelinek said he didn't know; he seemed to remember hearing there had once been such a custom in Bohemia. 'Mrs. Shimerda is made up her mind, he added. 'I try to persuade her, and say it looks bad for her to all the neighbours; but she say so it must be.
I heard of her from time to time; that she married, very soon after I last saw her, a young Bohemian, a cousin of Anton Jelinek; that they were poor, and had a large family. Once when I was abroad I went into Bohemia, and from Prague I sent Antonia some photographs of her native village.
The Widow Steavens rode up from her farm eight miles down the Black Hawk road. The cold drove the women into the cave-house, and it was soon crowded. A fine, sleety snow was beginning to fall, and everyone was afraid of another storm and anxious to have the burial over with. Grandfather and Jelinek came to tell Mrs. Shimerda that it was time to start.
Fuchs, who was the only cabinetmaker in the neighbourhood was set to work on a coffin. Jelinek put on his long wolfskin coat, and when we admired it, he told us that he had shot and skinned the coyotes, and the young man who 'batched' with him, Jan Bouska, who had been a fur-worker in Vienna, made the coat.
Grandfather and Jelinek came to tell Mrs. Shimerda that it was time to start. After bundling her mother up in clothes the neighbors had brought, Ántonia put on an old cape from our house and the rabbit-skin hat her father had made for her. Four men carried Mr. Shimerda’s box up the hill; Krajiek slunk along behind them. The coffin was too wide for the door, so it was put down on the slope outside.
Jelínek, "Materialen zur Vorgeschichte mid Volkskunde Böhmens," Mittheilungen der anthropolog. Gesellschaft in Wien xxi. p. 13 note. Mrs. Above, pp. 190 sq. Above, pp. 178, 205, 206. See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 311 sqq.
Fuchs brought home with him a stranger, a young Bohemian who had taken a homestead near Black Hawk, and who came on his only horse to help his fellow-countrymen in their trouble. That was the first time I ever saw Anton Jelinek. He was a strapping young fellow in the early twenties then, handsome, warm-hearted, and full of life, and he came to us like a miracle in the midst of that grim business.
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