re bound to cross. You and I can
each become good Americans by giving our best to make America better.
With the Dutch stock there is in both of us, there's no limit to what we
can do. Let's go to it." Naturally that talk left the two firm friends.

Bok felt somehow that he had been given a new draft of Americanism: the
word took on a new meaning for him; it stood for something different,
something deeper and finer than before. And every subsequent talk with
Roosevelt deepened the feeling and stirred Bok's deepest ambitions. "Go
to it, you Dutchman," Roosevelt would say, and Bok would go to it. A
talk with Roosevelt always left him feeling as if mountains were the
easiest things in the world to move.

One of Theodore Roosevelt's arguments which made a deep impression upon
Bok was that no man had a right to devote his entire life to the making
of money. "You are in a peculiar position," said the man of Oyster Bay
one day to Bok; "you are in that happy position where you can make money
and do good at the same time. A man wields a tremendous power for good
or for evil who is welcomed into a million homes and read with
confidence. That's fine, and is all right so far as it goes, and in your
case it goes very far. Still, there remains more for you to do. The
public has built up for you a personality: now give that personality to
whatever interests you in contact with your immediate fellow-men:
something in your neighborhood, your city, or your State. With one hand
work and write to your national audience: let no fads sway you. Hew
close to the line. But, with the other hand, swing into the life
immediately around you. Think it over."

Bok did think it over. He was now realizing the dream of his life for
which he had worked: his means were sufficient to give his mother every
comfort; to install her in the most comfortable surroundings wherever
she chose to live; to make it possible for her to spend the winters in
the United States and the summers in the Netherlands, and thus to keep
in touch with her family and friends in both countries. He had for years
toiled unceasingly to reach this point: he felt he had now achieved at
least one goal.

He had now turned instinctively to the making of a home for himself.
After an engagement of four years he had been married, on October 22,
1896, to Mary Louise Curtis, the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus H. K.
Curtis; two sons had been born to them; he had built and was occupying a
hou