itted him. Thus, for a time,
the strain upon the family exchequer was lessened.

But the American spirit of initiative had entered deep into the soul of
Edward Bok. The brother had left school a year before, and found a place
as messenger in a lawyer's office; and when one evening Edward heard his
father say that the office boy in his department had left, he asked that
he be allowed to leave school, apply for the open position, and get the
rest of his education in the great world itself. It was not easy for the
parents to see the younger son leave school at so early an age, but the
earnestness of the boy prevailed.

And so, at the age of thirteen, Edward Bok left school, and on Monday,
August 7, 1876, he became office boy in the electricians' department of
the Western Union Telegraph Company at six dollars and twenty-five cents
per week.

And, as such things will fall out in this curiously strange world, it
happened that as Edward drew up his chair for the first time to his desk
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 lun