And with this language Edward decided to do some experimenting. After a
few days at school, he cast his eyes over the group of his tormentors,
picked out one who seemed to him the ringleader, and before the boy was
aware of what had happened, Edward Bok was in the full swing of his
first real experiment with Americanization. Of course the American boy
retaliated. But the boy from the Netherlands had not been born and
brought up in the muscle-building air of the Dutch dikes for nothing,
and after a few moments he found himself looking down on his tormentor
and into the eyes of a crowd of very respectful boys and giggling girls
who readily made a passageway for his brother and himself when they
indicated a desire to leave the schoolyard and go home.
Edward now felt that his Americanization had begun; but, always
believing that a thing begun must be carried to a finish, he took, or
gave--it depends upon the point of view--two or three more lessons in
this particular phase of Americanization before he convinced these
American schoolboys that it might be best for them to call a halt upon
further excursions in torment.
At the best, they were difficult days at school for a boy of six without
the language. But the national linguistic gift inherent in the Dutch
race came to the boy's rescue, and as the roots of the Anglo-Saxon lie
in the Frisian tongue, and thus in the language of his native country,
Edward soon found that with a change of vowel here and there the English
language was not so difficult of conquest.
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