Years ago, a poor Dutch immigrant boy washed the windows of a bakery shop after school to help support his family. His people were so poor that in addition he used
to go out in the street with a basket every day and collect stray bits of coal that had
fallen in the gutter where the coal wagons had delivered fuel. That boy, Edward
Bok, never got more than six years of schooling in his life; yet eventually he made
himself one of the most successful magazine editors in the history of American
journalism. How did he do it? That is a long story, but how he got his start can be
told briefly. He got his start by using the principles advocated in this chapter.
He left school when he was thirteen and became an office boy for Western Union,
but he didn’t for one moment give up the idea of an education. Instead, he started to
educate himself, He saved his carfares and went without lunch until he had enough
money to buy an encyclopedia of American biography - and then he did an
unheard-of thing. He read the lives of famous people and wrote them asking for
additional information about their childhoods. He was a good listener. He asked
famous people to tell him more about themselves. He wrote General James A.
Garfield, who was then running for President, and asked if it was true that he was
once a tow boy on a canal; and Garfield replied. He wrote General Grant asking
about a certain battle, and Grant drew a map for him and invited this fourteen-year
old boy to dinner and spent the evening talking to him.
Soon our Western Union messenger boy was corresponding with many of the most
famous people in the nation: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Longfellow, Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, Louisa May Alcott, General Sherman and
Jefferson Davis. Not only did he correspond with these distinguished people, but as
soon as he got a vacation, he visited many of them as a welcome guest in their
homes. This experience imbued him with a confidence that was invaluable. These
men and women fired him with a vision and ambition that shaped his life. And all
this, let me repeat, was made possible solely by the application of a very simple principle. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
