Here and there in the Profiles there are broad hints that my associates and I were not always ultra refined in our actions. They say on occasion we quietly after hours smoothed the paths for our parkways. They insinuate that old trees were whisked away by ingenious stump pullers to allay the apprehensions of nervous environmentalists. [...]

As the city folk ride into the open country, we shall, I trust, be forgiven. The original railroad builders too were in a sense fuel merchants and chopped down some spindly woods to stoke their engines.