The leviathan of the Atlantic Ocean, in 1870, was _The Queen_, and when
she was warped into her dock on September 20 of that year, she
discharged, among her passengers, a family of four from the Netherlands
who were to make an experiment of Americanization.

The father, a man bearing one of the most respected names in the
Netherlands, had acquired wealth and position for himself; unwise
investments, however, had swept away his fortune, and in preference to
a new start in his own land, he had decided to make the new beginning
in the United States, where a favorite brother-in-law had gone several
years before. But that, never a simple matter for a man who has
reached forty-two, is particularly difficult for a foreigner in a
strange land. This fact he and his wife were to find out. The wife,
also carefully reared, had been accustomed to a scale of living which
she had now to abandon. Her Americanization experiment was to compel
her, for the first time in her life, to become a housekeeper without
domestic help. There were two boys: the elder, William, was eight and
a half years of age; the younger, in nineteen days from his
landing-date, was to celebrate his seventh birthday.

This younger boy was Edward William Bok. He had, according to the
Dutch custom, two other names, but he had decided to leave those in the
Netherlands. And the American public was, in later years, to omit for
him the "William."

Edward's first six days in the United States were spent in New York,
and then he was taken to Brooklyn, where he was destined to live for
nearly twenty years.