His next step was to take into his confidence two or three friends whose judgment he trusted and discuss the possible change.  Without an exception, they advised against it.  The periodical had no standing, they argued; Bok would be out of sympathy with its general atmosphere after his Scribner environment; he was now in the direct line of progress in New York publishing houses; and, to cap the climax, they each argued in turn, he would be buried in Philadelphia:  New York was the centre, etc., etc.

More than any other single argument, this last point destroyed Bok’s faith in the judgment of his friends.  He had had experience enough to realize that a man could not be buried in any city, provided he had the ability to stand out from his fellow-men.  He knew from his biographical reading that cream will rise to the surface anywhere, in Philadelphia as well as in New York:  it all depended on whether the cream was there:  it was up to the man.  Had he within him that peculiar, subtle something that, for the want of a better phrase, we call the editorial instinct?  That was all there was to it, and that decision had to be his and his alone!

A business trip for the Scribners now calling him West, Bok decided to stop at Philadelphia, have a talk with Mr. Curtis, and look over his business plant.  He did this, and found Mr. Curtis even more desirous than before to have him consider the position.  Bok’s instinct was strongly in favor of an acceptance.  A natural impulse moved him, without reasoning, to action.  Reasoning led only to a cautious mental state, and caution is a strong factor in the Dutch character.  The longer he pursued a conscious process of reasoning, the farther he got from the position.  But the instinct remained strong.

On his way back from the West, he stopped in Philadelphia again to consult his friend, George W. Childs; and here he found the only person who was ready to encourage him to make the change.

Bok now laid the matter before his mother, in whose feminine instinct he had supreme confidence.  With her, he met with instant discouragement.  But in subsequent talks he found that her opposition was based not upon the possibilities inherent in the position, but on a mother’s natural disinclination to be separated from one of her sons.  In the case of Fanny Davenport’s offer the mother’s instinct was strong against the proposition itself.  But in the present instance it was the mother’s love that was speaking; not her instinct or judgment.

Bok now consulted his business associates, and, to a man, they discouraged the step, but almost invariably upon the argument that it was suicidal to leave New York.  He had now a glimpse of the truth that there is no man so provincially narrow as the untravelled New Yorker who believes in his heart that the sun rises in the East River and sets in the North River.

He realized more keenly than ever before that the decision rested with him alone.  On September 1, 1889, Bok wrote to Mr. Curtis, accepting the position in Philadelphia; and on October 13 following he left the Scribners, where he had been so fortunate and so happy, and, after a week’s vacation, followed where his instinct so strongly led, but where his reason wavered.