One parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones

I did not want to find her aged and broken; I really dreaded it. In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

W. Cather, My Ántonia (1918), 328

What unprotected faces they were

what unprotected faces they were; their very roughness and violence made them defenceless. Those boys had no practised manner behind which they could retreat and hold people at a distance. They had only their hard fists to batter at the world with. Otto was already one of those drifting, case-hardened labourers who never marry or have children of their own. Yet he was so fond of children.

W. Cather, My Ántonia (1918), 83-84