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Bok, Edward William, 1863-1930

"A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After"

"I'll be able to work so
much better."
One rainy day, as Edward was coming up from Fulton Ferry with Mr.
Beecher, they met an old woman soaked with the rain. "Here, you take
this, my good woman," said the clergyman, putting his umbrella over her
head and thrusting the handle into the astonished woman's hand. "Let's
get into this," he said to Edward simply, as he hailed a passing car.
"There is a good deal of fraud about beggars," he remarked as he waved
a sot away from him one day; "but that doesn't apply to women and
children," he added; and he never passed such mendicants without
stopping. All the stories about their being tools in the hands of
accomplices failed to convince him. "They're women and children," he
would say, and that settled it for him.
"What's the matter, son? Stuck?" he said once to a newsboy who was
crying with a heavy bundle of papers under his arm.
"Come along with me, then," said Mr. Beecher, taking the boy's hand and
leading him into the newspaper office a few doors up the street.
"This boy is stuck," he simply said to the man behind the counter.


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