nings and on
Sundays; and the young editor found himself fully occupied. He now
revived the old idea of selecting a subject and having ten or twenty
writers express their views on it. It was the old symposium idea, but
it had not been presented in American journalism for a number of years.
He conceived the topic "Should America Have a Westminster Abbey?" and
induced some twenty of the foremost men and women of the day to discuss
it. When the discussion was presented in the magazine, the form being
new and the theme novel, Edward was careful to send advance sheets to
the newspapers, which treated it at length in reviews and editorials,
with marked effect upon the circulation of the magazine.

All this time, while Edward Bok was an editor in his evenings he was,
during the day, a stenographer and clerk of the Western Union Telegraph
Company. The two occupations were hardly compatible, but each meant a
source of revenue to the boy, and he felt he must hold on to both.

After his father passed away, the position of the boy's desk--next to
the empty desk of his father--was a cause of constant depression to
him. This was understood by the attorney for the company, Mr. Clarence
Cary, who sought the head of Edward's department, with the result that
Edward was transferred to Mr. Cary's department as the attorney's
private stenographer.

Edward had been much attracted to Mr. Cary, and the attorney believed
in the boy, and decided to show his interest by pushing him along. He
had heard of the dual role which Edward was playing; he bought a copy
of the magazine, and was interested. Edward now worked with new zest
for his employer and friend; while in every free moment he read law,
feeling that, as almost all his forbears had been lawyers, he might
perhaps be destined for the bar. This acquaintance with the
fundamental basis of law, cursory as it was, became like a gospel to
Edward Bok. In later years, he was taught its value by repeated
experience in his contact with corporate laws, contracts, property
leases, and other matters; and he determined that, whatever the
direction of activity taken by his sons, each should spend at least a
year in the study of law.

The control of the Western Union Telegraph Company had now passed into
the hands of Jay Gould and his companions, and in the many legal
matters arising therefrom, Edward saw much, in his office, of "the
little wizard of Wall Street." One day, the financier had t