nnot say. Who can say that of himself? But when I look around me at
the American-born I have come to know as my close friends, I wonder
whether, after all, the foreign-born does not make in some sense a
better American--whether he is not able to get a truer perspective;
whether his is not the deeper desire to see America greater; whether he
is not less content to let its faulty institutions be as they are;
whether in seeing faults more clearly he does not make a more decided
effort to have America reach those ideals or those fundamentals of his
own land which he feels are in his nature, and the best of which he is
anxious to graft into the character of his adopted land?

It is naturally with a feeling of deep satisfaction that I remember two
Presidents of the United States considered me a sufficiently typical
American to wish to send me to my native land as the accredited minister
of my adopted country. And yet when I analyze the reasons for my choice
in both these instances, I derive a deeper satisfaction from the fact
that my strong desire to work in America for America led me to ask to be
permitted to remain here.

It is this strong impulse that my Americanization has made the driving
power of my life. And I ask no greater privilege than to be allowed to
live to see my potential America become actual: the America that I like
to think of as the America of Abraham Lincoln and of Theodore
Roosevelt--not faultless, but less faulty. It is a part in trying to
shape that America, and an opportunity to work in that America when it
comes, that I ask in return for what I owe to her. A greater privilege
no man could have.

Edward William Bok: Biographical Data

1863: Born, October 9, at Helder, Netherlands.
1870: September 20: Arrived in the United States.
1870: Entered public schools of Brooklyn, New York.
1873: Obtained first position in Frost's Bakery,
Smith Street, Brooklyn, at 50 cents per week.
1876: August 7: Entered employ of the Western
Union Telegraph Company as office-boy.
1882: Entered employ of Henry Holt & Company as stenographer.
1884: Entered employ of Charles Scribner's Sons as stenographer.
1884: Became editor of The Brooklyn Magazine.
1886: Founded The Bok Syndicate Press.
1887: Published Henry Ward Beecher Memorial (privately printed).
1889: October 20: Became editor of The Ladies' Home Journal.
1890: Published Successward: Doubleday, McClure & Company.