se at Merion, Pennsylvania, a suburb six miles from the Philadelphia
City Hall. When she was in this country his mother lived with him, and
also his brother, and, with a strong belief in life insurance, he had
seen to it that his family was provided for in case of personal
incapacity or of his demise. In other words, he felt that he had put his
own house in order; he had carried out what he felt is every man's duty:
to be, first of all, a careful and adequate provider for his family. He
was now at the point where he could begin to work for another goal, the
goal that he felt so few American men saw: the point in his life where
he could retire from the call of duty and follow the call of
inclination.

At the age of forty he tried to look ahead and plan out his life as far
as he could. Barring unforeseen obstacles, he determined to retire from
active business when he reached his fiftieth year, and give the
remainder of his life over to those interests and influences which he
assumed now as part of his life, and which, at fifty, should seem to him
best worth while. He realized that in order to do this he must do two
things: he must husband his financial resources and he must begin to
accumulate a mental reserve.

The wide public acceptance of the periodical which he edited naturally
brought a share of financial success to him. He had experienced poverty,
and as he subsequently wrote, in an article called "Why I Believe in
Poverty," he was deeply grateful for his experience. He had known what
it was to be poor; he had seen others dear to him suffer for the bare
necessities; there was, in fact, not a single step on that hard road
that he had not travelled. He could, therefore, sympathize with the
fullest understanding with those similarly situated, could help as one
who knew from practice and not from theory. He realized what a
marvellous blessing poverty can be; but as a condition to experience, to
derive from it poignant lessons, and then to get out of; not as a
condition to stay in.

Of course many said to Bok when he wrote the article in which he
expressed these beliefs: "That's all very well; easy enough to say, but
how can you get out of it?" Bok realized that he could not definitely
show any one the way. No one had shown him. No two persons can find the
same way out. Bok determined to lift himself out of poverty because his
mother was not born in it, did not belong in it, and could not stand it.
That gave him the f