You Cant Judge
a Person from the Clothes Worn
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 and probably
didn’t even deserve to be in Cambridge.
She frowned. “We want to see the president,”
the man said softly. “He’ll be busy
all day,” the secretary snapped. “We’ll
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 they just see you for a few minutes
they’ll leave,” she told him. He sighed
in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance
obviously didn’t have the time to spend with
them, but he detested gingham dresses and homespun
suits cluttering up his outer office.
The president, stern faced 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. And 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 plant at
Harvard.”
For a moment the lady was silent. The president
was pleased. He could get rid of them now. And the
lady turned to her husband and said quietly, “Is
that all it costs to start a university? Why don’t
we just start our own?” Her husband nodded.
The president’s face wilted in confusion and
bewilderment. And Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford walked
away, traveling to Palo Alto, California, where
they established the university that bears their
name, 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 do nothing for them or
to them.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
