The Americanization of Edward Bok | Page 7

a life well spent.
And, as all good work is immortal, so to-day all over the world goes on
the influence of this one man and one woman, whose life on that little
Dutch island changed its barren rocks to a bower of verdure, a home for
the birds and the song of the nightingale. The grandchildren have gone
to the four corners of the globe, and are now the generation of

workers-some in the far East Indies; others in Africa; still others in our
own land of America. But each has tried, according to the talents given,
to carry out the message of that day, to tell the story of the grandfather's
work; just as it is told here by the author of this book, who, in the
efforts of his later years, has tried to carry out, so far as opportunity has
come to him, the message of his grandmother:
"Make you the world a bit more beautiful and better because you have
been in it."

I. The First Days in America
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.
Thanks to the linguistic sense inherent in the Dutch, and to an
educational system that compels the study of languages, English was

already familiar to the father and mother. But to the two sons, who had
barely learned the beginnings of their native tongue, the English
language was as a closed book. It seemed a cruel decision of the father
to put his two boys into a public school in Brooklyn, but he argued that
if they were to become Americans, the sooner they became part of the
life of the country and learned its language for themselves, the better.
And so, without the ability to make known the slightest want or to
understand a single word, the morning after their removal to Brooklyn,
the two boys were taken by their father to a public school.
The American public-school teacher was perhaps even less well
equipped in those days than she is to-day to meet the needs of two
Dutch boys who could not understand a word she said, and who could
only wonder what it was all about. The brothers did not even have the
comfort of each other's company, for, graded by age, they were placed
in separate classes.
Nor was the American boy of 1870 a whit less cruel than is the
American boy of 1920; and he was none the less loath to show that
cruelty. This trait was evident at the first recess of the first day at
school. At the dismissal, the brothers naturally sought each other, only
to find themselves surrounded by a group of tormentors who were
delighted to have such promising objects for their fun. And of this
opportunity they made the most. There was no form of petty cruelty
boys' minds could devise that was not inflicted upon the two helpless
strangers. Edward seemed to look particularly inviting, and nicknaming
him "Dutchy" they devoted themselves at each noon recess and after
school to inflicting their cruelties upon him.
Louis XIV may have been right when he said that "every new language
requires a new soul," but Edward Bok