E-text prepared by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Photograph of Edward Bok.]
A DUTCH BOY FIFTY YEARS AFTER
BY
EDWARD BOK
ADAPTED FROM
"THE AMERICANIZATION OF EDWARD BOK"
EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
JOHN LOUIS HANEY, PH.D.
PRESIDENT CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL PHILADELPHIA
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON
ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO
1921
TO
THE SCHOOLBOYS AND SCHOOLGIRLS OF AMERICA
I DEDICATE THIS STORY OF A BOY
WHO BELIEVED THAT AN OBSTACLE IS NOT SOMETHING
TO BE AFRAID OF
BUT IS ONLY A DIFFICULTY TO BE OVERCOME
AND WHO TOOK FOR HIS MOTTO
AS I HOPE EVERY ONE WHO READS THESE PAGES WILL DO
THESE LINES BY MADELINE S. BRIDGES:
"Give to the world the best you have
And the best will come back to you."
INTRODUCTION
In recent years American literature has been enriched by certainautobiographies of men and women who had been born abroad, but who hadbeen brought to this country, where they grew up as loyal citizens ofour great nation. Such assimilated Americans had to face not only theusual conditions confronting a stranger in a strange land, but had todevelop within themselves the noble conception of Americanism that waslater to become for them a flaming gospel. Andrew Carnegie, the cannyScotch lad who began as a cotton weaver's assistant, became a steelmagnate and an eminent constructive philanthropist. Jacob Riis, theambitious Dane, told in The Making of an American the story of hisrise to prominence as a social and civic worker in New York. MaryAntin, who was brought from a Russian ghetto at the age of thirteen,gave us in The Promised Land a most impressive interpretation ofAmerica's significance to the foreign-born. The very title of her bookwas a flash of inspiration.
To this group of notable autobiographies belongs The Americanizationof Edward Bok, which received, from Columbia University, the JosephPulitzer Prize of one thousand dollars as "the best American biographyteaching patriotic and unselfish service to the Nation and at the sametime illustrating an eminent example." The judges who framed thatdecision could not have stated more aptly the scope and value of thebook. It is the story of an unusual education, a conspicuousachievement, and an ideal now in course of realization.
At the age of six Edward Bok was brought