to begin his work on that Monday morning, there had been born in Boston,
exactly twelve hours before, a girl-baby who was destined to become his
wife. Thus at the earliest possible moment after her birth, Edward Bok
started to work for her!



III. The Hunger for Self-Education

With school-days ended, the question of self-education became an
absorbing thought with Edward Bok. He had mastered a schoolboy's
English, but seven years of public-school education was hardly a basis
on which to build the work of a lifetime. He saw each day in his duties
as office boy some of the foremost men of the time. It was the period of
William H. Vanderbilt's ascendancy in Western Union control; and the
railroad millionnaire and his companions, Hamilton McK. Twombly, James
H. Banker, Samuel F. Barger, Alonzo B. Cornell, Augustus Schell, William
Orton, were objects of great interest to the young office boy. Alexander
Graham Bell and Thomas A. Edison were also constant visitors to the
department. He knew that some of these men, too, had been deprived of
the advantage of collegiate training, and yet they had risen to the top.
But how? The boy decided to read about these men and others, and find
out. He could not, however, afford the separate biographies, so he went
to the libraries to find a compendium that would authoritatively tell
him of all successful men. He found it in Appleton's Encyclopedia, and,
determining to have only the best, he saved his luncheon money, walked
instead of riding the five miles to his Brooklyn home, and, after a
period of saving, had his reward in the first purchase from his own
earnings: a set of the Encyclopedia. He now read about all the
successful men, and was encouraged to find that in many cases their