The Americanization of Edward Bok | Page 4

in dealing with the Edward Bok, editor and publicist, whom I have tried to describe in this book, because, in many respects, he has had and has been a personality apart from my private self. I have again and again found myself watching with intense amusement and interest the Edward Bok of this book at work. I have, in turn, applauded him and criticised him, as I do in this book. Not that I ever considered myself bigger or broader than this Edward Bok: simply that he was different. His tastes, his outlook, his manner of looking at things were totally at variance with my own. In fact, my chief difficulty during Edward Bok's directorship of The Ladies' Home Journal was to abstain from breaking through the editor and revealing my real self. 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 Brooks's Books and Emerson's Mental Mist VII. A Plunge into Wall Street VIII. Starting a Newspaper Syndicate IX. Association with Henry Ward Beecher X. The First "Woman's Page," "Literary Leaves," and Entering Scribner's XI. The Chances for Success XII. Baptism Under Fire XIII. Publishing Incidents and Anecdotes XIV. Last Years in New York XV. Successful Editorship XVI. First Years as a Woman's Editor XVII. Eugene Field's Practical Jokes XVIII. Building Up a Magazine XIX. Personality Letters XX. Meeting a Reverse or Two XXI. A Signal Piece of Constructive Work XXII. An Adventure in Civic and Private Art XXIII. Theodore Roosevelt's Influence XXIV. Theodore Roosevelt's Anonymous Editorial Work XXV. The President and the Boy XXVI. The Literary Back-Stairs XXVII. Women's Clubs and Woman Suffrage XXVIII. Going Home with Kipling, and as a Lecturer XXIX. An Excursion into the Feminine Nature XXX. Cleaning Up the Patent-Medicine and Other Evils XXXI. Adventures in Civics XXXII. A Bewildered Bok XXXIII. How Millions of People Are Reached XXXIV. A War Magazine and War Activities XXXV. At the Battle-Fronts in the Great War XXXVI. The End of Thirty Years' Editorship XXXVII. The Third Period XXXVIII. Where America Fell Short with Me XXXIX. What I Owe to America Edward William Bok: Biographical Data The Expression of a Personal Pleasure

An Introduction of Two Persons
IN WHOSE LIVES ARE FOUND THE SOURCE AND MAINSPRING OF SOME OF THE EFFORTS OF THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK IN HIS LATER YEARS
Along