Henry Churchill King to Jane Addams, May 16, 1907

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May 16, 1907

Miss Jane Addams,
Hull-House, 335 South Halsted Street,
Chicago.

My dear Miss Addams:

I have been delaying my answer to your letter in the hope that Mrs King and I might be able, in some way, to accept your very kind and alluring invitation to come to Hull-House; but the circumstances that have finally developed are these: On account of other engagements I cannot leave Oberlin until Friday night, reaching Chicago after seven in the morning. I have to speak at half past ten in the morning, and am obliged to take the train right back to Oberlin at 1:45 in the afternoon. This hurried trip seems to make it impossible for me to get at all what I should like to get at Hull-House, and to make it hardly the best time for Mrs King to come. We both hope that we can do it later.

While I am writing, I wonder if we many not count upon you for an address before the Cleveland Congregational Club, of which I happen to be president this year, at their February meeting, the third Monday or Tuesday in the month. That meeting we intend to turn in a general patriotic direction, and I have been especially thinking of you with the thought that you might be willing to speak to us in the line of your book Newer Ideals of Peace. I can think of few things that it seems to me would be of more value to the Club. The Club has not, I am sorry to say, been in a very flourishing financial condition, but we could assure you, I think, $50 and expenses, and the warm gratitude of us all besides.

I should be almost sorry I had brought you this invitation if it were going to prevent your accepting another which I have been wanting to bring you, to speak at the next convention of the Religious Education Association, also in February, [page 2] which is held at Washington. There, too, I had hoped you might speak for us in the same line, as we want to make the meeting of the Association this year bear directly on the needs of the nation in its larger and higher life. Perhaps you can put these two things in on the same trip, with less expenditure of time and strength for yourself. I will send you the details of this second invitation a little later, when we are quite certain as to dates, [though] the probable dates of the Association will be the 11th to 13th, and I hope that the place will be Washington.

Very sincerely yours,