ater. He did not make of
himself a pack-horse; what he undertook he did from interest in it, and
that made it a pleasure to him when to others it was a burden. He
instinctively reasoned it out that an unpleasant task is never
accomplished by stepping aside from it, but that, unerringly, it will
return later to be met and done.

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 hardest kind of work was back of
every success; that nothing in the world of business just happened, but
that everything was brought about, and only in one way--by a willingness
of spirit and a determination to carry through. He soon exploded for
himself the misleading and comfortable theory of luck: the only lucky
people, he found, were those who worked hard. To them, luck came in the
shape of what they had earned. There were exceptions here and there, as
there are to every rule; but the majority of these, he soon found, were
more in the seeming than in the reality. Generally speaking--and of
course to this rule there are likewise exceptions, or as the Frenchman
said, "All generalizations are false, including this one"--a man got in
this world about what he worked for.

And that became, for himself, the rule of Edward Bok's life.

XII. Baptism Under Fire

The personnel of the Scribner house was very youthful from the members
of the firm clear down the line. It was veritably a house of young men.

The story is told of a Boston publisher, sedate and fairly elderly, who
came to the Scribner house to transact business with several of its
departments. One of his errands concerning itself with advertising, he
was introduced to Bok, who was then twenty-four. Looking the youth over,
he transacted his business as well as he felt it could be transacted
with a manager of such tender years, and then sought the head of the
educational department: this brought him to another young man of
twenty-four.

With his yearnings for some one more advanced in years full upon him,
the visitor now inquired for the business manager of the new magazine,
only to find a man of twenty-six. His next introduction was to the head
of the out-of-town business department, who was twenty-seven.

At this point the Boston man asked to see Mr. Scribner. This disclosed
to him Mr. Arthur H. Scribner, the junior partner, who owned to
twenty-eight summer