There were two boys: the elder, William, was eight and a half years of age; the younger, in nineteen days from his landing-date, was to celebrate his seventh birthday.
This younger boy was Edward William Bok.

He had, according to the Dutch custom, two other names, but he had decided to leave those in the Netherlands.

And the American public was, in later years, to omit for him the "William." Edward's first six days in the United States were spent in New York, and then he was taken to Brooklyn, where he was destined to live for nearly twenty years.
Thanks to the linguistic sense inherent in the Dutch, and to an educational system that compels the study of languages, English was already familiar to the father and mother.

But to the two sons, who had barely learned the beginnings of their native tongue, the English language was as a closed book.

It seemed a cruel decision of the father to put his two boys into a public-school in Brooklyn, but he argued that if they were to become Americans, the sooner they became part of the life of the country and learned its language for themselves, the better.