Who can say that of himself?
But when I look around me at the American-born I have come to know as my close friends, I wonder whether, after all, the foreign-born does not make in some sense a better American--whether he is not able to get a truer perspective; whether his is not the deeper desire to see America greater; whether he is not less content to let its faulty institutions be as they are; whether in seeing faults more clearly he does not make a more decided effort to have America reach those ideals or those fundamentals of his own land which he feels are in his nature, and the best of which he is anxious to graft into the character of his adopted land?
It is naturally with a feeling of deep satisfaction that I remember two Presidents of the United States considered me a sufficiently typical American to wish to send me to my native land as the accredited minister of my adopted country.

And yet when I analyze the reasons for my choice in both these instances, I derive a deeper satisfaction from the fact that my strong desire to work in America for America led me to ask to be permitted to remain here.
It is this strong impulse that my Americanization has made the driving power of my life.

And I ask no greater privilege than to be allowed to live to see my potential America become actual: the America that I like to think of as the America of Abraham Lincoln and of Theodore Roosevelt--not faultless, but less faulty.

It is a part in trying to shape that America, and an opportunity to work in that America when it comes, that I ask in return for what I owe to her.

A greater privilege no man could have.
EDWARD WILLIAM BOK BIOGRAPHICAL DATA 1863: October 9: Born at Helder, Netherlands.
1870; September 20: Arrived in the United States.
1870: Entered public schools of Brooklyn, New York.
1873: Obtained first position in Frost's Bakery, Smith Street, Brooklyn, at 50 cents per week.
1876: August 7: Entered employ of the Western Union Telegraph Company as office-boy.
1882: Entered employ of Henry Holt & Company as stenographer.
1884: Entered employ of Charles Scribner's Sons as stenographer.
1884: Became editor of _The Brooklyn Magazine_.
1886: Founded the Bok Syndicate Press.
1887: Published Henry Ward Beecher Memorial (privately printed).
1889: October 20: Became editor of _The Ladies' Home Journal_.
1890: Published _Successward_: Doubleday, McClure & Company.
1894: Published _Before He Is Twenty_: Fleming H.Revell Company.
1896: October 22: Married Mary Louise Curtis.
1897: September 7: Son born; William Curtis Bok.
1900: Published _The Young Man in Business_: L.G.Page & Company.
1905: January 25: Son born: Cary William Bok.
1906: Published _Her Brother's Letters_ (Anonymous): Moffat, Yard & Company.
1907: Degree of LL.D.