The Americanization of Edward Bok 18. Đây là một cuốn sách rất ý nghĩa, dễ đọc và hàm chứa nhiều bài học hay về phong cách sống, về quản trị cuộc đời. Có những bài học có thể áp dụng cho cuộc sống hiện tại của mình. Đặc biệt là câu chuyện kể về việc Edward đã thành công như thế nào khi nỗ lực xây dựng tuần báo The Ladies Home Journal và những bài học về cách tạo dựng cuộc sống cho riêng mình: Hãy đơn giản hóa mọi khó khăn, nghiêm khắc với bản thân, quyết tâm. | Still-- The friends of Edward Bok may be right when they said he made a mistake in his retirement. However-- As Mr. Dooley says It s a good thing sometimes to have people size ye up wrong Hinnessey it s whin they ve got ye er measure ye re in danger. Edward Bok s friends have failed to get his measure--yet They still have to learn what he has learned and is learning every day the joy as Charles Lamb so aptly put it upon his retirement of walking about and around instead of to and fro. The question now naturally arises having read this record thus far To what extent with his unusual opportunities of fifty years has the Americanization of Edward Bok gone How far is he to-day an American These questions so direct and personal in their nature are perhaps best answered in a way more direct and personal than the method thus far adopted in this chronicle. We will therefore let Edward Bok answer these questions for himself in closing this record of his Americanization. XXXVIII. Where America Fell Short with Me When I came to the United States as a lad of six the most needful lesson for me as a boy was the necessity for thrift. I had been taught in my home across the sea that thrift was one of the fundamentals in a successful life. My family had come from a land the Netherlands noted for its thrift but we had been in the United States only a few days before the realization came home strongly to my father and mother that they had brought their children to a land of waste. Where the Dutchman saved the American wasted. There was waste and the most prodigal waste on every hand. In every street-car and on every ferry-boat the floors and seats were littered with newspapers that had been read and thrown away or left behind. If I went to a grocery store to buy a peck of potatoes and a potato rolled off the heaping measure the groceryman instead of picking it up kicked it into the gutter for the wheels of his wagon to run over. The butcher s waste filled my mother s soul with .
