"In two years, he was glad to come back," and so the examples ran on.

"No big man ever retired from active business and did great work afterwards," Bok was told.
"No ?" he answered.

"Not even Cyrus W.Field or Herbert Hoover ?" And all this time Edward Bok's failure to be entirely Americanized was brought home to his consciousness.

After fifty years, he was still not an American! He had deliberately planned, and then had carried out his plan, to retire while he still had the mental and physical capacity to enjoy the fruits of his years of labor! For foreign to the American way of thinking it certainly was: the protestations and arguments of his friends proved that to him.

After all, he was still Dutch; he had held on to the lesson which his people had learned years ago; that the people of other European countries had learned; that the English had discovered: that the Great Adventure of Life was something more than material work, and that the time to go is while the going is good! For it cannot be denied that the pathetic picture we so often see is found in American business life more frequently than in that of any other land: men unable to let go--not only for their own good, but to give the younger men behind them an opportunity.