TO MRS. FRANKLIN K. LANE
En route to California, Monday, March [1910]
… I have spent a rather pleasant day reading, and looking at this great desert of New Mexico and Arizona. No one on board that I know or care to know, but the big sky and my books keep me busy. Do you remember that picture in the Corcoran Gallery with a wee line of land at the bottom and a great high reach of blue sky above, covering nine-tenths of the canvas? I have thought of it often to-day—"the high, irrepressible sky." It is moonlight and the rare air gives physical tone, so that I feel a bit more like myself, as was, than is ordinary. …
I have thought of a lecture to-day and you must keep this letter
as a reminder and make me do it one of these days: THE PROBLEMS OF
RAILROAD REGULATION. THE TRAFFIC MANAGER AS A STATESMAN: THE
UNEARNED INCREMENT OF OUR RAILROADS.
And another: THE NEED OF A WORLD BANK: INTERNATIONAL AND INDEPENDENT FINANCIAL AUTHORITY, which shall fix standards of value, based on no one metal or commodity, but on a great number of staples.
I have thought much of the farm. It will be so far away and so impracticable of use! But such an anchor to windward, for two most hand-to-mouth spendthrifts! …