I have always looked after the little things of my business; weightier matters will take care of themselves.

I once drove a pair of horses from New York to Vicksburg, and to this day I can almost map out that country as I saw it then, with its hills and valleys, villages and rivers. Yes, I naturally attribute something of my success in railroad building to the interest I take in such things.

Mark Hopkins was one of the truest and best men that ever lived. He had a keen analytical mind; was thoroughly accurate, and took general supervision of the books, contracts, etc. He was strictly the office man, and never bought or sold anything. I always felt when I was in the East that our business in his hands was entirely safe.

For the source of any characteristic so widespread and uniform as this adaptation to environment we must go back to the very beginning of the human race.

Geologists are rapidly becoming convinced that the mammals spread from their central Asian point of origin largely because of great variations in climate.

In fact, the history of North America has been perhaps more profoundly influenced by man's inheritance from his past homes than by the physical features of his present home.

Man could not stay there forever. He was bound to spread to new regions, partly because of his innate migratory tendency and partly because of Nature's stern urgency.

The evidence points to central Asia as man's original home, for the general movement of human migrations has been outward from that region and not inward.

The human organism inherits so delicate an adjustment to climate that, in spite of man's boasted ability to live anywhere, the strain of the frozen North eliminates the more nervous and active types of mind.

The Indians could not undertake any widespread cultivation of the plains not only because they lacked iron tools but also because they had no draft animals.

Thus the races, though alike in their physical response to climate, may possibly be different in their mental response because they have approached America by different paths.

Today, no less than in the past, the tetrahedral form of the earth and the relation of the tetrahedron to the poles and to the equator preserve the conditions that favor rapid evolution.

We are learning, too, that the love of beauty is one of Nature's greatest healers.

Year by year we are learning that in this restless, strenuous American life of ours vacations are essential.

Fertile soil, level plains, easy passage across the mountains, coal, iron, and other metals imbedded in the rocks, and a stimulating climate, all shower their blessings upon man.

The coast of British Columbia was one of the three chief centers of aboriginal America.

Although farming of any sort was almost as impossible in the plains as in the dry regions of winter rains farther west, the abundance of buffaloes made life much easier in many respects.

Nevertheless most of the evergreen forests of the north must always remain the home of wild animals and trappers, a backward region in which it is easy for a great fur company to maintain a practical monopoly.

No part of the world can be truly understood without a knowledge of its garment of vegetation, for this determines not only the nature of the animal inhabitants but also the occupations of the majority of human beings.

A journey of four hundred and thirty miles can be made in any part of the United States, but in Turkey it takes as many days.