r for the race to which I belong. I
have two. My first excuse is that this is not a very good world to
raise folks in anyway. It is not very well adapted to raising
magnificent people. There's only a quarter of it land to start with.
It is three times better fitted for raising fish than folks, and in
that one quarter of land there is not a tenth part fit to raise people
on. You can't raise people without a good climate. You have got to
have the right kind of climate, and you have got to have certain
elements in the soil, or you can't raise good people. Do you know that
there is only a little zig-zag strip around the world within which have
been produced all men of genius?

The southern hemisphere has never produced a man of genius, never; and
never will until civilization, fighting the heat that way and the cold
this, widens this portion of the earth until it is capable of producing
great men and great women. It is the same with men that it is with
vegetation; you go into a garden, and find there flowers growing. And
as you go up the mountain, the birch and the hemlock and the spruce are
to be found. And as you go toward the top, you find little, stunted
trees getting a miserable subsistence out of the crevices of the rocks,
and you go on up and up and up, until finally you find at the top
little moss-like freckles. You might as well try to raise flowers
where those freckles grow as to raise great men and women where you
haven't got the soil.

I don't believe man ever came to any high station without woman. There
has got to be some restraint, something to make you prudent, something
to make you industrious. And in a country where you don't need any bed
quilt but a cloud, revolution is the normal condition of the people.
You have got to have the fireside; you have got to have the home, and
there by the fireside will grow and bloom the fruits of the human race.
I recollect a while ago I was in Washington when they were trying to
annex Santo Domingo. They said: "We want to take in Santo Domingo."
Said I: "We don't want it." "Why," said they, "it is the best
climate the earth can produce. There is everything you want." "Yes,"
said I, "but it won't produce men. We don't want it. We have got soil
enough now. Take 5,000 ministers from New England, 5,000 presidents of
colleges, and 5,000 solid business men, and their families, and take
them to Santo Domingo; and then you will see the effect of climate. The