The degree to which he was reconciled to me after two years of ostracism was proved by his annual invitation to come along to Peru with his party. And I would have gone and told the story of his mine as he wanted me to do if it had not been for the pictures he sent me—those pictures of unprotected swaying bridges suspended from mountain side to mountain side, hundreds of feet above the rushing rocky streams. I had not the head for that, and so gave up what would have been, I am sure, one of the most amusing adventures that ever came my way. Not a few of the personal experiences in gathering my materials left me with unhappy impressions, more unhappy in retrospect perhaps than they were at the moment. They were part of the day’s work, sometimes very exciting parts. There was the two hours I spent in studying Mr. John D. Rockefeller. As the work had gone on, it became more and more clear to me that the Standard Oil Company was his creation. “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man,” says Emerson. I found it so. Everybody in the office interested in the work began to say, “After the book is done you must do a character sketch of Mr. Rockefeller.” I was not keen for it. It would have to be done like the books, from documents; that is, I had no inclination to use the extraordinary gossip which came to me from many sources. If I were to do it I wanted only that of which I felt I had sure proof, only those things which seemed to me to help explain the public life of this powerful, patient, secretive, calculating man of so peculiar and special a genius. “You must at least look at Mr. Rockefeller,” my associates insisted. “But how?” Mr. Rogers himself had suggested that I see him. I had consented. I had returned to the suggestion several times, but at last was made to understand that it could not be done. I had dropped his name from my list. It was John Siddall who then took the matter in hand. “You must see him,” was Siddall’s judgment. To arrange it became almost an obsession. And then what seemed to him like a providential opening came. It was announced that on a certain Sunday of October 1903 Mr. Rockefeller before leaving Cleveland, where he had spent his summer, for his home in New York would say good-bye in a little talk to the Sunday school of his church—a rally, it was called. As soon as Siddall learned of this he begged me to come on. “We can go to Sunday school; we can stay to church. I will see that we have seats where we will have a full view of the man. You will get him in action.” Of course I went, feeling a little mean about it too. He had not wanted to be seen apparently. It was taking him unaware. Siddall’s plan worked to perfection, worked so well from the start that again and again he seemed ready to burst from excitement in the two hours we spent in the church.