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Updated: June 22, 2025
"We've got more to say than this," said Gidding. "We've got to talk." He brought out a little engagement book that at once drew out mine in response. And a couple of days after, we spent a morning and afternoon together and got down to some very intimate conversation.
I know them both and neither has the slightest appearance of being animated by you. And equally perplexing is your being mixed up with an American like that man Gidding in Peace Conferences and Social Reform Congresses and so forth. It's so Carnegieish. There I'm surer because I've seen your name in reports of meetings and I've read your last two papers in the Fortnightly.
Nevertheless, Lord Chiltern did go down to Peterborough the next day by the hunting train, and rode his horse Bonebreaker so well in that famous run from Sutton springs to Gidding that after the run young Piles, of the house of Piles, Sarsnet, and Gingham, offered him three hundred pounds for the animal. "He isn't worth above fifty," said Lord Chiltern.
He was to take the train far up, ride down as blind baggage to the Murchison Pass, and then climb over the tender into the cab, stick up the fireman and the engineer, and make them bring the engine to a halt at the mouth of the pass, with Gidding Creek and safety for all that train only five minutes away.
We motored out to lunch at a place called Nyack, above the Palisades, we crossed on a ferry to reach it, and we visited the house of Washington Irving near Yonkers on our way. I've still a vivid picture in my mind of the little lawn at Irvington that looks out upon the rushing steel of Hudson River, where Gidding opened his heart to me.
Groups of ardent souls gathered to spend their time in worship and acts of mercy like those at Little Gidding, in Huntingdonshire, under the direction of Mr. Nicholas Ferrar.
Gidding remained with me there and came back with me to Chicago, where I wanted to see something of the Americanization of the immigrant, and my survey of America, the social and economic problem of America, resolved itself more and more into a conference with him. There is no more fruitless thing in the world than to speculate how life would have gone if this thing or that had not happened.
I am not a ready or abundant talker, but Gidding has the knack of precipitating my ideas. He is America to my Europe, and at his touch all that has been hanging in concentrated solution in my mind comes crystallizing out. He has to a peculiar degree that directness and simplicity which is the distinctive American quality.
Yet I cannot help but wonder how far I might have travelled along the lines of my present work if I had gone to America and not met Gidding, or if I had met him without visiting America. The man and his country are inextricably interwoven in my mind.
"What I think of America. It's the same inevitable question. I think everything of it. It's the stepping-off place. I've come here at last, because it matters most." "That's what we all want to believe," said Gidding. "That's what we want you to tell us." He reflected. "It's immense, isn't it, perfectly immense? But I am afraid at times we're too disposed to forget just what it's all about.
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