THE HUNGER FOR SELF-EDUCATION With school-days ended, the question of self-education became an absorbing thought with Edward Bok.

He had mastered a schoolboy's English, but six years of public-school education was hardly a basis on which to build the work of a lifetime.

He saw each day in his duties as office boy some of the foremost men of the time.

It was the period of William H.Vanderbilt's ascendancy in Western Union control; and the railroad millionnaire and his companions were objects of great interest to the young office boy.

Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A.Edison were also constant visitors to the department.