But what with helping his mother, tending the baker’s shop in after-school hours, serving his paper route, plying his street-car trade, and acting as social reporter, it soon became evident to Edward that he had not much time to prepare his school lessons.  By a supreme effort, he managed to hold his own in his class, but no more.  Instinctively, he felt that he was not getting all that he might from his educational opportunities, yet the need for him to add to the family income was, if anything, becoming greater.  The idea of leaving school was broached to his mother, but she rebelled.  She told the boy that he was earning something now and helping much.  Perhaps the tide with the father would turn and he would find the place to which his unquestioned talents entitled him.  Finally the father did.  He associated himself with the Western Union Telegraph Company as translator, a position for which his easy command of languages admirably fitted 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 twelve, 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!

CHAPTER 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 six 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 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