Shortly after that, however, Mr. Beecher dictated to Edward some material for a book he was writing. Edward naturally wondered at this, and asked the stenographer what had happened.
"Nothing," he said. "Only Mr. Beecher asked me how much it would cost you to have me come to him each week. I told him, and then he sent me away."
That was Henry Ward Beecher!
Edward Bok was in the formative period between boyhood and young manhood when impressions meant lessons, and associations meant ideals. Mr. Beecher never disappointed. The closer one got to him, the greater he became--in striking contrast to most public men, as Edward had already learned.
Then, his interests and sympathies were enormously wide. He took in so much! One day Edward was walking past Fulton Market, in New York City, with Mr. Beecher.
"Never skirt a market," the latter said; "always go through it. It's the next best thing, in the winter, to going South."
Of course all the marketmen knew him, and they knew, too, his love for green things.
"What do you think of these apples, Mr. Beecher?" one marketman would stop to ask.
Mr. Beecher would answer heartily: "Fine! Don't see how you grow them. All that my trees bear is a crop of scale. Still, the blossoms are beautiful in the spring, and I like an apple-leaf. Ever examine one?" The marketman never had. "Well, now, do, the next time you come across an apple-tree in the spring."
And thus he would spread abroad an interest in the beauties of nature which were commonly passed over.