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.  On his father’s side, there was a succession of jurists.  On the mother’s side, not a journalist is visible.

Edward attended the Sunday-school of the Carroll Park Methodist Episcopal Church, in Brooklyn, of which a Mr. Elkins was superintendent.  One day he learned that Mr. Elkins was associated with the publishing house of Harper and Brothers.  Edward had heard his father speak of Harper’s Weekly and of the great part it had played in the Civil War; his father also brought home an occasional copy of Harper’s Weekly and of Harper’s Magazine.  He had seen Harper’s Young People; the name of Harper and Brothers was on some of his school-books; and he pictured in his mind how wonderful it must be for a man to be associated with publishers of periodicals that other people read, and books that other folks studied.  The Sunday-school superintendent henceforth became a figure of importance in Edward’s eyes; many a morning the boy hastened from home long before the hour for school, and seated himself on the steps of the Elkins house under the pretext of waiting for Mr. Elkins’s son to go to school, but really for the secret purpose of seeing Mr. Elkins set forth to engage in the momentous business of making books and periodicals.  Edward would look after the superintendent’s form until it was lost to view; then, with a sigh, he would go to school, forgetting all about the Elkins boy whom he had told the father he had come to call for!