added: "I
have rubbed out the word 'must' from my vocabulary," which was not
true. No man ever reaches that point. Duty of some sort confronts a
man in business or out of business, and duty spells "must." But there
is less "must" in the vocabulary of the retired man; and it is this
lessened quantity that gives the tang of joy to the new day.

It is a wonderful inner personal satisfaction to reach the point when a
man can say: "I have enough." His soul and character are refreshed by
it: he is made over by it. He begins a new life! he gets a sense of a
new joy; he feels, for the first time, what a priceless possession is
that thing that he never knew before, freedom. And if he seeks that
freedom at the right time, when he is at the summit of his years and
powers and at the most opportune moment in his affairs, he has that
supreme satisfaction denied to so many men, the opposite of which comes
home with such cruel force to them; that they have overstayed their
time: they have worn out their welcome.

There is no satisfaction that so thoroughly satisfies as that of going
while the going is good.

Still----

The friends of Edward Bok may be right when they said he made a mistake
in his retirement.

However----

As Mr. Dooley says: "It's a good thing, sometimes, to have people size
ye up wrong, Hinnessey: it's whin they've got ye'er measure ye're in
danger."

Edward Bok's friends have failed to get his measure,--yet!

They still have to learn what he has learned and is learning every day:
"the joy," as Charles Lamb so aptly put it upon his retirement, "of
walking about and around instead of to and fro."

* * * * *

The question now naturally arises, having read this record thus far: To
what extent, with his unusual opportunities of fifty years, has the
Americanization of Edward Bok gone? How far is he, to-day, an
American? These questions, so direct and personal in their nature, are
perhaps best answered in a way more direct and personal than the method
thus far adopted in this chronicle. We will, therefore, let Edward Bok
answer these questions for himself, in closing this record of his
Americanization.

CHAPTER XXI

WHERE AMERICA FELL SHORT WITH ME

When I came to the United States as a lad of six, the most needful
lesson for me, as a boy, was the necessity for thrift. I had been
taught in my home across the sea that thrift was one of the
fundamentals in a successful l