Jim "loves with a personal passion the great country through which his railway runs and branches", so he likes to sit in the observation car watching the scenery flash by. The little towns that he sees reminds him of "what it is like to spend one's childhood" in such places, and in the introduction, he and the author, who grew up with Jim, are talking about these remembrances, and in particular, Antonia, a Bohemian girl they once knew. More than anyone else, Antonia "seemed to mean to (them) the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of (their) childhood", and Jim and the author wonder why they never wrote about her.
A few months after this encounter, Jim gives the author a manuscript which he has written about Antonia. This manuscript, "substantially as he brought it", became the book My Antonia.
(all quotes from "Author's Introduction" in My Antonia)
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