Edward told him he regretted the reference because he knew that General Hayes would read it in the New York papers, and he would be nonplussed to understand it, considering the cordial relations which existed between the two men.  Mr. Beecher knew of Edward’s relations with the ex-President, and they had often talked of him together.

Nothing more was said of the incident.  When the Beecher home was reached Mr. Beecher said:  “Just come in a minute.”  He went straight to his desk, and wrote and wrote.  It seemed as if he would never stop.  At last he handed Edward an eight-page letter, closely written, addressed to General Hayes.

“Read that, and mail it, please, on your way home.  Then it’ll get there just as quickly as the New York papers will.”

It was a superbly fine letter,—­one of those letters which only Henry Ward Beecher could write in his tenderest moods.  And the reply which came from Fremont, Ohio, was no less fine!

CHAPTER IX

THE FIRST “WOMAN’S PAGE,” “LITERARY LEAVES,” AND ENTERING SCRIBNER’S

Edward had been in the employ of Henry Holt and Company as clerk and stenographer for two years when Mr. Cary sent for him and told him that there was an opening in the publishing house of Charles Scribner’s Sons, if he wanted to make a change.  Edward saw at once the larger opportunities possible in a house of the importance of the Scribners, and he immediately placed himself in communication with Mr. Charles Scribner, with the result that in January, 1884, he entered the employ of these publishers as stenographer to the two members of the firm and to Mr. Edward L. Burlingame, literary adviser to the house.  He was to receive a salary of eighteen dollars and thirty-three cents per week, which was then considered a fair wage for stenographic work.  The typewriter had at that time not come into use, and all letters were written in long-hand.  Once more his legible handwriting had secured for him a position.

Edward Bok was now twenty-one years of age.  He had already done a prodigious amount of work for his years.  He was always busy.  Every spare moment of his evenings was devoted either to writing his literary letter, to the steady acquirement of autograph letters in which he still persisted, or to helping Mr. Beecher in his literary work.  The Plymouth pastor was particularly pleased with Edward’s successful exploitation of his pen work; and he afterward wrote:  “Bok is the only man who ever seemed to make my literary work go and get money out of it.”

Enterprise and energy the boy unquestionably possessed, but one need only think back even thus far in his life to see the continuous good fortune which had followed him in the friendships he had made, and in the men with whom his life, at its most formative period, had come into close contact.  If we are inclined to credit young Bok with an ever-willingness to work and a certain quality of initiative, the influences which played upon him must also be taken into account.