A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After, Edward William Bok [best book reader .TXT] 📗

the short period that remained each afternoon after his household duties or his extra studies at school, and when he played it was with the same vim and energy with which he worked. He had little choice in the matter, but he often regrets to-day that he did not have more time in his boyhood for play.

Like most boys, Edward wanted a little money now and then for spending, but his mother was not always able to spare the pennies that he desired. So he had to fall back on his own resources to earn small sums by running errands for neighbors and in other ways familiar to boys of his age. One day he came across an Italian who was earning money in a rather unusual way. This Italian would collect the bright-colored pictures that adorned the labels of fruit and vegetable cans. He would paste these pictures into a scrap-book and sell it to a mother as a picture-book for her children. Edward saw that the Italian's idea smacked of originality and he asked the man where he got his pictures.

"From the cans I find on lots and in ash-barrels," was the reply.

"If you had more pictures, you could make more books and so earn more money, couldn't you?" asked Edward, as an idea struck him.

"Yes," answered the Italian.

"How much will you give me if I bring you a hundred pictures?" asked Edward.

"A cent apiece," said the Italian.

"All right," agreed Edward.

The boy went to work at once, and in three days he had collected the first hundred pictures, gave them to the Italian, and received his first dollar.

"Now," said Edward, as he had visions of larger returns from his efforts, "your books have pictures of only four or five kinds, like apples, pears, tomatoes, and green peas. How much will you give me for pictures of special fruit which you haven't got, like apricots, green-gages, and pineapples?"

"Two cents each," replied the Italian.

"No," bargained Edward. "They're much harder to find than the others. I'll get you some for three cents each."

"All right," said the vender, realizing that the boy was stating the case correctly.

Edward had calculated that if he would search the vacant lots in back of the homes of the well-to-do, where the servants followed the tidy habit of throwing cans and refuse over the back fences, he would find an assortment of canned-fruit labels different from those used by persons of moderate means. He made a visit to those places and found the less familiar pictures just as he thought he would. Thus he was not only able to sell his labels to the Italian for three cents instead of a cent apiece, but to give greater variety to the vender's scrap-books.

In this manner Edward Bok learned to make the most of his opportunities even during his earliest years in America.


CHAPTER II


THE FIRST JOB: FIFTY CENTS A WEEK

The elder Bok did not find his "lines cast in pleasant places" in the United States. He found himself, professionally, unable to adjust the methods of his own land and of a lifetime to those of a new country. As a result the fortunes of the transplanted family did not flourish, and Edward soon saw his mother physically failing under burdens to which her nature was not accustomed nor her hands trained. Then he and his brother decided to relieve their mother in the housework by rising early in the morning, building the fire, preparing breakfast, and washing the dishes before they went to school. After school they gave up their play hours, and swept and scrubbed, and helped their mother to prepare the evening meal and wash the dishes afterward. It was a curious coincidence that it should fall upon Edward thus to get a first-hand knowledge of woman's housework which was to stand him in such practical stead in later years.

It was not easy for the parents to see their boys thus forced to do work which only a short while before had been done by a retinue of servants. And the capstone of humiliation seemed to be when Edward and his brother, after having for several mornings found no kindling wood or coal to build the fire, decided to go out of evenings with a basket and pick up what wood they could find in neighboring lots, and the bits of coal spilled from the coal-bin of the grocery-store, or left on the curbs before houses where coal had been delivered. The mother remonstrated with the boys, although in her heart she knew that the necessity was upon them. But Edward had been started upon his Americanization career, and answered; "This is America, where one can do anything if it is honest. So long as we don't steal the wood or coal, why shouldn't we get it?" And, turning away, the saddened mother said nothing.

But while the doing of these homely chores was very effective in relieving the untrained and tired mother, it added little to the family income. Edward looked about and decided that the time had come for him, young as he was, to begin some sort of wage-earning. But how and where? The answer he found one afternoon when standing before the shop-window of a baker in the neighborhood. The owner of the bakery, who had just placed in the window a series of trays filled with buns, tarts, and pies, came outside to look at the display. He found the hungry boy wistfully regarding the tempting-looking wares.

"Look pretty good, don't they?" asked the baker.

"They would," answered the Dutch boy with his national passion for cleanliness, "if your window were clean."

"That's so, too," mused the baker. "Perhaps you'll clean it."

"I will," was the laconic reply. And Edward Bok, there and then, got his first job. He went in, found a step-ladder, and put so much Dutch energy into the cleaning of the large show-window that the baker immediately arranged with him to clean it every Tuesday and Friday afternoon after school. The salary was to be fifty cents per week!

But one day, after he had finished cleaning the window, and the baker was busy in the rear of the store, a customer came in, and Edward ventured to wait on her. Dexterously he wrapped up for another the fragrant currant-buns for which his young soul--and stomach--so hungered! The baker watched him, saw how quickly and smilingly he served the customer, and offered Edward an extra dollar per week if he would come in afternoons and sell behind the counter. He immediately entered into the bargain with the understanding that, in addition to his salary of a dollar and a half per week, he should each afternoon carry home from the good things unsold a moderate something as a present to his mother. The baker agreed, and Edward promised to come each afternoon except Saturday.

"Want to play ball, hey?" said the baker.

"Yes, I want to play ball," replied the boy, but he was not reserving his Saturday afternoons for games, although, boy-like, that might be his preference.

Edward now took on for each Saturday morning--when, of course, there was no school--the delivery route of a weekly paper called the _South Brooklyn Advocate_. He had offered to deliver the entire neighborhood edition of the paper for one dollar, thus increasing his earning capacity to two dollars and a half per week.

Transportation, in those days in Brooklyn, was by horse-cars, and the car-line on Smith Street nearest Edward's home ran to Coney Island. Just around the corner where Edward lived the cars stopped to water the horses on their long haul. The boy noticed that the men jumped from the open cars in summer, ran into the cigar-store before which the watering-trough was placed, and got a drink of water from the ice-cooler placed near the door. But that was not so easily possible for the women and the children, who were forced to take the long ride without a drink. It was this that he had in mind when he reserved his Saturday afternoon to "play ball."

Here was an opening, and Edward decided to fill it. He bought a shining new pail, screwed three hooks on the edge from which he hung three clean shimmering glasses, and one Saturday afternoon when a car stopped the boy leaped on, tactfully asked the conductor if he did not want a drink, and then proceeded to sell his water, cooled with ice, at a cent a glass to the passengers. A little experience showed that he exhausted a pail with every two cars, and each pail netted him thirty cents. Of course Sunday was a most profitable day; and after going to Sunday-school in the morning, he did a further Sabbath service for the rest of the day by refreshing tired mothers and thirsty children on the Coney Island cars--at a penny a glass!

But the profit of six dollars which Edward was now reaping in his newly found "bonanza" on Saturday and Sunday afternoons became apparent to other boys, and one Saturday the young ice-water boy found that he had a competitor; then two and soon three. Edward immediately met the challenge; he squeezed half a dozen lemons into each pail of water, added some sugar, tripled his charge, and continued his monopoly by selling "Lemonade, three cents a glass." Soon more passengers were asking for lemonade than for plain drinking-water!

One evening Edward went to a party of young people, and his latent journalistic sense whispered to him that his young hostess might like to see her social affair in print. He went home, wrote up the party, being careful to include the name of every boy and girl present, and next morning took the account to the city editor of the _Brooklyn Eagle_, with the sage observation that every name mentioned in that paragraph represented a buyer of the paper, who would like to see his or her name in print, and that if the editor had enough of these reports he might very advantageously strengthen the circulation of _The Eagle_. The editor was not slow to see the point, and offered Edward three dollars a column for such reports. On his way home, Edward calculated how many parties he would have to attend a week to furnish a column, and decided that he would organize a corps of private reporters himself. Forthwith, he saw every girl and boy he knew, got each to promise to write for him an account of each party he or she attended or gave, and laid great stress on a full recital of names. Within a few weeks, Edward was turning in to _The Eagle_ from two to three columns a week; his pay was raised to four dollars a column; the editor was pleased in having started a department that no other paper carried, and the "among those present" at the parties all bought the paper and were immensely gratified to see their names.

So everybody was happy, and Edward Bok, as a full-fledged reporter, had begun his journalistic career.

It is curious how deeply embedded in his nature, even in his earliest years, was the inclination toward the publishing business. The word "curious" is used here because Edward is the first journalist in the Bok family in all the centuries through which it extends in Dutch history.