No man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property.

1904. [A description of Southern California. Harvard UP 1950.

Charles Dudley Warner (September 12 1829 – October 20 1900) was an American essayist novelist and friend of Mark Twain with whom he co-authored the novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.