“Never
Be Too Quick To Judge Another Human Being”
Editorial by Robert Kirwan
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 president of
Harvard'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 to do. "Maybe if they just see you for a few
minutes, they'll leave," she told him.
And 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 that 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 can do nothing for them or to them." Malcolm
Forbes
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