A lady in a faded grey dress and her husband, dressed in a homespun suit walked in timidly without an appointment into theHarvard 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 Harvard.
"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.
"Maybe if you see them for a few minutes, they`ll leave" she said to him. 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, and 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 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. Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford got up and walked away, traveling to Palo Alto, California where they established the University that bears their name. StanfordUniversity, a memorial to a son that Harvard no longer cared about.
Most of the time we judge people by their outer appearance, which can be misleading. And in this impression, we tend to treat people badly by thinking they can do nothing for us. Thus we tend to lose our potential good friends, employees or customers.
Remember
In our Life, we seldom get people with whom we want to share & grow our thought process. But because of our inner EGO we miss them forever.
very rightly said, it is becuase of self EGO or others EGO, problems arise...
so if everyone sheds EGO if they can,... we can have a wonderful society... but will that happen?
Dear Brainchild,
A good episode to highlight our enemy-EGO !
I remember a saying "OUTWARD APPEARANCES ARE ALWAYS DECEPTIVE"
Don`t judge a person only by his appearance !
Yet another saying which impressed me most is " We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems "
Likewise,as in the above saying, the President of Harvard University ,missed a very great opportunity when he and his secretary were underestimated Mr and Mrs. Leland Stanford by their dress.
Don`t believe that hoax email. The stanfords wanted to build something of their own in California as a memorial to his son. They didn`t have an idea to build a university. They went to Cornell and Yale too for ideas before going to Harward. Harward president gave the idea of University and gave an estimate of the cost. The hoax email has been in circulation since 1998, it seems.
The Stanfords visited several great universities of the East to gather ideas. An urban legend, widely circulated on the Internet but untrue, describes the couple as poorly-dressed country bumpkins who decided to found their own university only after being rebuffed in their offer to endow a building at Harvard. They did visit Harvard`s president but were well-received and given advice on starting a new university in California. From the outset they made some untraditional choices: the university would be coeducational, in a time when most were all-male; non-denominational, when most were associated with a religious organization; and avowedly practical, producing "cultured and useful citizens" when most were concerned only with the former
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