Sublime

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

At one point he told Cowley that the man he would most like to resemble was Major General John Aaron Rawlins. According to the Dictionary of American Biography, Rawlins was “the most nearly indispensable” officer of General Grant’s staff. It was his job to keep Grant sober; edit his important papers and put them in final form; apply tact and persis

In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their overpowering strength; and I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the very inadequate securities which exist against tyranny.

Roosevelt, in striking contrast, was one of those politicians equipped with “antennae of the greatest possible delicacy, which convey to them . . . the perpetually changing contours of events and feelings and human activities.” Gifted with the capacity “to take in minute impressions,” they absorb and extract purpose from—as do artists—vast multitud

AT&T’s savior was Theodore Vail, who became its president in 1907, just a few years after Millikan’s friend Frank Jewett joined the company.11 In appearance, Vail seemed almost a caricature of a Gilded Age executive: Rotund and jowly, with a white walrus mustache, round spectacles, and a sweep of silver hair, he carried forth a magisterial conf

With the help of the Carnegie trustees, one of whom was President Franklin Roosevelt’s uncle, Bush put together a plan. “I knew that you couldn’t get anything done in that damn town,” he recalled, “unless you organized under the wing of the President.”

Du vendredi 15 mai au lundi 18 mai 1903, ils disparaissent dans les bois. Selon les journaux qui suivent l’aventure, ce sont les deux plus grands hommes de plein air de notre époque. Ils campent sous les grands séquoias, ils font un feu de camp – car toujours Muir fait du feu –, et il raconte au président les destructions aveugles, les fraudes, la

“The modest and cordial young fellow who passed through New York a few weeks ago with his mother will never be known outside the circle of his mourning friends,” commented John Hay in a touching obituary written for the New York Tribune. “But ’little Tad’ will be remembered as long as any live who bore a personal share in the great movements whose