Bestsellers, American, 1895-1923

The Americanization of Edward Bok The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After

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Chapters

4. Part 4

When Edward Bok stood before the home of Longfellow, he realized that he was to see the man around whose head the boy's youthful reading had cast a sort of halo. And when he saw...

28. Part 28

Third: Service for others. That is the acid test where many a man falls short: to know when he has enough, and to be willing not only to let well enough alone, but to give a hel...

3. Part 3

"Now, this world does not often present the condition of facts herein described. Men entirely great are very rare indeed, and even Washington, who approached greatness as near a...

7. Part 7

Mr. Beecher was rarely angry. Once, however, he came near it; yet he was more displeased than angry. Some of his family and Edward had gone to a notable public affair at the Bro...

27. Part 27

The father was then exactly seventy-two years old. He was a retired business man when the war broke out. After two years of the heroic struggle he decided that he couldn't keep...

1. Part 1

[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] [Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may n...

26. Part 26

The need for Y. M. C. A. secretaries overseas and in the camps soon became acute, and Bok was appointed chairman of the Philadelphia Recruiting Committee. As in the case of his...

18. Part 18

Bok did think it over. He was now realizing the dream of his life for which he had worked: his means were sufficient to give his mother every comfort; to install her in the most...

2. Part 2

The same instinct that was so often to lead Edward aright in his future life, at its very beginning served him in a singularly valuable way in directing his attention to the stu...

13. Part 13

It was a lively friendship that Eugene Field gave to Edward Bok, full of anxieties and of continuous forebodings, but it was worth all that it cost in mental perturbation. No ra...

6. Part 6

The day before he was to leave the Western Union Telegraph Company the fact of his resignation became known to Mr. Gould. The financier told the boy there was no reason for his...

21. Part 21

Large audiences greeted him wherever he went, but he had not gone far on his tour when he realized that he was not getting what he thought he would. There was much entertaining...

8. Part 8

Edward Bok was now twenty-one years of age. He had already done a prodigious amount of work for a boy of his years. He was always busy. Every spare moment of his evenings was de...

15. Part 15

From this incident arose the widely published story that Bok cabled Kipling, asking permission to omit a certain drinking reference, and substitute something else, whereupon Kip...

19. Part 19

"Your father has just written me, and I want him to bring you on and shake hands with me as soon as you are well enough to travel. Then I am going to give you, myself, a copy of...

10. Part 10

Speaking of Mrs. Stowe brings to mind an unscrupulous and yet ingenious trick just about this time played by a young man attached to one of the New York publishing houses. One e...

14. Part 14

"Such is 'talk,' almost invariably, as you see it lying in state in an 'interview.' The interviewer seldom tries to tell one how a thing was said; he merely puts in the naked re...

5. Part 5

The boy put the book into his pocket; and as he did so Emerson's eye caught the slip on his desk, in the boy's handwriting, and, with a smile of absolute enlightenment, he turne...

20. Part 20

Of course, the clubs refused to accept or even to consider his suggestions; they were quite competent to decide for themselves the particular subjects for their meetings, they a...

24. Part 24

The Ladies' Home Journal began to strike a definite musical note. It first caught the eye and ear of its public by presenting the popular new marches by John Philip Sousa; and w...

12. Part 12

When all his friends begged Bok to begin proceedings against the New York Evening Sun because of the libellous (?) articles written about him by "The Woman About Town," the edit...

11. Part 11

He gathered a collection of domestic magazines then published, and looked them over to see what was already in the field. Then he began to study himself, his capacity for the wo...

17. Part 17

The president of a large Western railroad wrote to Bok that he agreed absolutely with his position, and asked whether he had any definite suggestions to offer for the improvemen...

9. Part 9

Obstacles, to Edward Bok, soon became merely difficulties to be overcome, and he trusted to his instinct to show him the best way to overcome them. He soon learned that the hard...

22. Part 22

Bok was shown the most heart-rending photographs portraying the butchery of the mother and the starvation of her little ones. He collected all the photographs that he could secu...

23. Part 23

Slowly but surely the subject became a debatable one. Where, when Bok began, the leading prophylactic society in New York could not secure five speaking dates for its single lec...

25. Part 25

Neither did the President of the United States consider himself above a possible declination of his material if it seemed advisable to the editor. In 1916 Woodrow Wilson wrote t...

16. Part 16

He also believed that if he could "dress up" the past, he could arrest the attention of a generation which was too likely to boast of its interest only in the present and the fu...

29. Part 29

But fancy the quest I had been compelled to make to acquire the simple information that should have been placed in my hands or made readily accessible to me. And how many foreig...