The editor now sought an opportunity to know personally the man whom he admired.  It came at a dinner at the University Club, and Colonel Roosevelt suggested that they meet there the following day for a “talk-fest.”  For three hours the two talked together.  The fact that Colonel Roosevelt was of Dutch ancestry interested Bok; that Bok was actually of Dutch birth made a strong appeal to the Colonel.  With his tremendous breadth of interests, Roosevelt, Bok found, had followed him quite closely in his work, and was familiar with “its high points,” as he called them.  “We must work for the same ends,” said the Colonel, “you in your way, I in mine.  But our lines are bound to cross.  You and I can each become good Americans by giving our best to make America better.  With the Dutch stock there is in both of us, there’s no limit to what we can do.  Let’s go to it.”  Naturally that talk left the two firm friends.

Bok felt somehow that he had been given a new draft of Americanism; the word took on a new meaning for him; it stood for something different, something deeper and finer than before.  And every subsequent talk with Roosevelt deepened the feeling and stirred Bok’s deepest ambitions.  “Go to it, you Dutchman,” Roosevelt would say, and Bok would go to it.  A talk with Roosevelt always left him feeling as if mountains were the easiest things in the world to move.

One of Theodore Roosevelt’s arguments which made a deep impression upon Bok was that no man had a right to devote his entire life to the making of money.  “You are in a peculiar position,” said the man of Oyster Bay one day to Bok; “you are in that happy position where you can make money and do good at the same time.  A man wields a tremendous power for good or for evil who is welcomed into a million homes and read with confidence.  That’s fine, and is all right so far as it goes, and in your case it goes very far.  Still, there remains more for you to do.  The public has built up for you a personality:  now give that personality to whatever interests you in contact with your immediate fellow-men:  something in your neighborhood, your city, or your State.  With one hand work and write to your national audience:  let no fads sway you.  Hew close to the line.  But, with the other hand, swing into the life immediately around you.  Think it over.”

Bok did think it over.  He was now realizing the dream of his life for which he had worked:  his means were sufficient to give his mother every comfort; to install her in the most comfortable surroundings wherever she chose to live; to make it possible for her to spend the winters in the United States and the summers in the Netherlands, and thus to keep in touch with her family and friends in both countries.  He had for years toiled unceasingly to reach this point:  he felt he had now achieved at least one goal.