THE AMERICANIZATION OF EDWARD BOK

CONTENTS


An Explanation
An Introduction of Two Persons
I. The First Days in America
II. The First Job: Fifty Cents a Week
III. The Hunger for Self-Education
IV. A Presidential Friend and a Boston Pilgrimage
V. Going to the Theatre with Longfellow
VI. Phillips Brooks's Books and Emerson's Mental Mist
VII. A Plunge into Wall Street
VIII. Starting a Newspaper Syndicate
IX. Association with Henry Ward Beecher
X. The First "Woman's Page," "Literary Leaves," and Entering Scribner's
XI. The Chances for Success
XII. Baptism Under Fire
XIII. Publishing Incidents and Anecdotes
XIV. Last Years in New York
XV. Successful Editorship
XVI. First Years as a Woman's Editor
XVII. Eugene Field's Practical Jokes
XVIII. Building Up a Magazine
XIX. Personality Letters
XX. Meeting a Reverse or Two
XXI. A Signal Piece of Constructive Work
XXII. An Adventure in Civic and Private Art
XXIII. Theodore Roosevelt's Influence
XXIV. Theodore Roosevelt's Anonymous Editorial Work
XXV. The President and the Boy
XXVI. The Literary Back-Stairs
XXVII. Women's Clubs and Woman Suffrage
XXVIII. Going Home with Kipling, and as a Lecturer
XXIX. An Excursion into the Feminine Nature
XXX. Cleaning Up the Patent-Medicine and Other Evils
XXXI. Adventures in Civics
XXXII. A Bewildered Bok
XXXIII. How Millions of People Are Reached
XXXIV. A War Magazine and War Activities
XXXV. At the Battle-Fronts in the Great War
XXXVI. The End of Thirty Years' Editorship
XXXVII. The Third Period
XXXVIII. Where America Fell Short with Me
XXXIX. What I Owe to America
Edward William Bok: Biographical Data
The Expression of a Personal Pleasure




An Introduction of Two Persons

IN WHOSE LIVES ARE FOUND THE SOURCE AND MAINSPRING OF SOME OF THE
EFFORTS OF THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK IN HIS LATER YEARS


Along an island in the North Sea, five miles from the Dutch Coast,
stretches a dangerous ledge of rocks that has proved the graveyard of
many a vessel sailing that turbulent sea. On this island once lived a
group of men who, as each vessel was wrecked, looted the vessel and
murdered those of the crew who reached shore. The government of the
Netherlands decided to exterminate the island pirates, and for the job
King William selected a young lawyer at The Hague.

"I want you to clean up that island," was the royal order. It was a
formidable job for a young man of twenty-odd years. By royal
proclamation he was made mayor of the island, and within a year, a court
of law being established, the young attorney was appointed judge; and in
that dual capacity he "cleaned up" the island.

The young man now decided to settle on the island, and began to look
around for a home. It was a grim place, barren of tree or living green
of any kind; it was as if a man had been exiled to Siberia. Still,
argued the young mayor, an ugly place is ugly only because it is not
beautiful. And beautiful he determined this island should be.

One day the young mayor-judge called together his council. "We must have
trees," he said; "we can make this island a spot of beauty if we will!"
But the practical seafaring men demurred; the little money they had was
needed for matters far more urgent than trees.

"Very well," was the mayor's decision--and little they guessed what the
words were destined to mean--"I will do it myself." And that year he
planted one hundred trees, the first the island had ever seen.

"Too cold," said the islanders; "the severe north winds and storms will
kill them all."

"Then I will plant more," said the unperturbed mayor. And for the fifty
years that he lived on the island he did so. He planted trees each year;
and, moreover, he had deeded to the island government land which he
turned into public squares and parks, and where each spring he set out
shrubs and plants.

Moistened by the salt mist the trees did not wither, but grew
prodigiously. In all that expanse of turbulent sea--and only those who
have seen the North Sea in a storm know how turbulent it can be--there
was not a foot of ground on which the birds, storm-driven across the
water-waste, could rest in their flight. Hundreds of dead birds often
covered the surface of the sea. Then one day the trees had grown tall
enough to look over the sea, and, spent and driven, the first birds came
and rested in their leafy shelter. And others came and found protection,
and gave their gratitude vent in song.