A
lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband, dressed in a homespun
threadbare suit, stepped off the train in Boston, and walked timidly
without an appointment into the Harvard University President's outer office.
The
secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, country hicks had
no business at Harvard & probably didn't even deserve to be in
Cambridge. "We'd like to see the president," the man said softly. "He will be busy all day," the secretary snapped. "We will wait," the lady replied.
For
hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally
become discouraged and go away. They didn't, and the secretary grew
frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president, even though it
was a chore she always regretted.
"Maybe
if you see them for a few m inutes, they'll leave," she said to him.
He sighed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance
obviously didn't have the time to spend with them, and he detested gingham dresses and homespun suits cluttering up his outer office.
The
president, stern faced and with dignity, strutted toward the couple.
The lady told him, "We had a son who attended Harvard for one year. He
loved Harvard. He was happy here. But
about a year ago, he was accidentally killed. My husband and I would
like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on campus." The president
wasn't touched. He was shocked.
"Madam,"
he said, gruffly, "we can't put up a statue for every person who
attended Harvard and died.. If we did, this place would look like a
cemetery." "Oh, no," the lady explained quickly. "We don't want to
erect a statue. We thought we would like to give a building to Harvard."
The
president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun
suit, then exclaimed, "A building! Do you have any earthly idea how
much a building costs? We have over seven and a half million dollars in the physical buildings here at Harvard."
For a moment the lady was silent.
The
president was pleased. Maybe he could get rid of them now. The lady
turned to her husband and said quietly, "Is that all it cost to start a
university? Why don't we just start our own? " Her husband nodded. The
president's face wilted in confusion and bewilderment.
Mr.
and Mrs. Leland Stanford got up and walked away, traveling to Palo
Alto, California where they established the university that bears their
name, Stanford University, a memorial to a son that Harvard no longer
cared about.
You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who they think can do nothing for them.
- A TRUE STORY By Malcolm Forbes
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