letter in the New
York Star, and asked that it be supplied weekly with the letter. These
newspapers renamed the letter "Bok's Literary Leaves," and the feature
started on its successful career.

Edward had been in the employ of Henry Holt and Company as clerk and
stenographer for two years when Mr. Cary sent for him and told him that
there was an opening in the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons,
if he wanted to make a change. Edward saw at once the larger
opportunities possible in a house of the importance of the Scribners,
and he immediately placed himself in communication with Mr. Charles
Scribner, with the result that in January, 1884, he entered the employ
of these publishers as stenographer to the two members of the firm and
to Mr. Edward L. Burlingame, literary adviser to the house. He was to
receive a salary of eighteen dollars and thirty-three cents per week,
which was then considered a fair wage for stenographic work. The
typewriter had at that time not come into use, and all letters were
written in long-hand. Once more his legible handwriting had secured for
him a position.

Edward Bok was now twenty-one years of age. He had already done a
prodigious amount of work for a boy of his years. He was always busy.
Every spare moment of his evenings was devoted either to writing his
literary letter, to the arrangement or editing of articles for his
newspaper syndicate, to the steady acquirement of autograph letters in
which he still persisted, or to helping Mr. Beecher in his literary
work. The Plymouth pastor was particularly pleased with Edward's
successful exploitation of his pen work; and he afterward wrote: "Bok is
the only man who ever seemed to make my literary work go and get money
out of it."

Enterprise and energy the boy unquestionably possessed, but one need
only think back even thus far in his life to see the continuous good
fortune which had followed him in the friendships he had made, and in
the men with whom his life, at its most formative period, had come into
close contact. If we are inclined to credit young Bok with an
ever-willingness to work and a certain quality of initiative, the
influences which played upon him must also be taken into account.

Take, for example, the peculiarly fortuitous circumstances under which
he entered the Scribner publishing house. As stenographer to the two
members of the firm, Bok was immediately brought into touch with the
leading authors of the day,