Several times I did so, and each time I saw how different was
the effect from that when the editorial Edward Bok had been allowed
sway. Little by little I learned to subordinate myself and to let him
have full rein.

But no relief of my life was so great to me personally as his decision
to retire from his editorship. My family and friends were surprised and
amused by my intense and obvious relief when he did so. Only to those
closest to me could I explain the reason for the sense of absolute
freedom and gratitude that I felt.

Since that time my feelings have been an interesting study to myself.
There are no longer two personalities. The Edward Bok of whom I have
written has passed out of my being as completely as if he had never been
there, save for the records and files on my library shelves. It is easy,
therefore, for me to write of him as a personality apart: in fact, I
could not depict him from any other point of view. To write of him in
the first person, as if he were myself, is impossible, for he is not.

The title suggests my principal reason for writing the book. Every life
has some interest and significance; mine, perhaps, a special one. Here
was a little Dutch boy unceremoniously set down in America unable to
make himself understood or even to know what persons were saying; his
education was extremely limited, practically negligible; and yet, by
some curious decree of fate, he was destined to write, for a period of
years, to the largest body of readers ever addressed by an American
editor--the circulation of the magazine he edited running into figures
previously unheard of in periodical literature. He made no pretense to
style or even to composition: his grammar was faulty, as it was natural
it should be, in a language not his own. His roots never went deep, for
the intellectual soil had not been favorable to their growth;--yet, it
must be confessed, he achieved.

But how all this came about, how such a boy, with every disadvantage to
overcome, was able, apparently, to "make good"--this possesses an
interest and for some, perhaps, a value which, after all, is the only
reason for any book.

EDWARD W. BOK
MERION, PENNSYLVANIA, 1920

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