Uprooted from a well-ordered existence in Virginia when she was nine, Willa Cather came of age in the West during the last years of the American frontier. Her great love for the beauty of the open grassland and her abiding interest in the Old World customs of her neighbors—the dreamers and builders—inspired and enlivened her celebrated fiction. Collected here are short works from the early portion of Cather's career—including the title story, "The Sculptor's Funeral," and "The Enchanted Bluff"—each tale indelibly marked by the themes and landscapes she would explore throughout the remainder of her writing life and in classic works such as O Pioneers! and My Ántonia.