Two things I find striking and worthy of special note in today’s selection by Willa Cather, “The Sculptor’s Funeral.”  One is the sense of place that is keen in the story—that of a frozen, barren plains town in the throes of winter--which harkens back to her injunction, “Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.”  The other is the great insight she displays in describing uneasy groups of men in this story—men gathered to receive a coffin in the frozen night and men gathered to mourn one not quite their own.