Don't judge people by their appearance, translated by Zhang Bao 2018.6.8

A woman in a faded striped dress and her husband, dressed in a shabby suit, walked out of the Boston train station and timidly entered the foreign affairs office of the president of Harvard University without prior appointment.

The secretary could tell at a glance that these hillbillies were not going to have any business with Harvard, and that they weren't even supposed to be on the streets of Cambridge. The lady frowned and said, "We're going to see the headmaster." But the secretary said, "He's been busy all day." The lady said, "It's okay, we'll wait a while." ”

The couple waited for hours, but the secretary did not want to pay attention to them, but hoped that they would get impatient and leave on their own. But they didn't leave. This upset the secretary. She decided to disturb the principal, and said to the principal, "Maybe they just want to see you, or they'll leave in a few minutes." The headmaster gestured impatiently, and nodded. He was about to meet with an important person, he didn't have time to deal with these insignificant little people, and he hated the striped dresses and shabby suits, which made his office look very out of place.

The president put on a haughty posture and spoke sharply towards the couple, but the lady said to the president, "We have a son who has been at Harvard for a year, and he loves Harvard and is very happy here." But he died in an accident. My husband and I wanted to erect a monument to him somewhere on campus. Untouched by her words, the Chancellor found them ridiculous, and said angrily, "Madam, we can't erect a statue of every person who goes to Harvard and dies, it makes our university look like a cemetery." ”

"Oh no," the lady explained at once, "we don't want to erect a statue. We want to build a building for Harvard. The headmaster's eyes widened. He glanced at the striped dress and the shabby suit, and exclaimed, "Build a building, you know, how much does it cost to build a building? Our buildings at Harvard totaled over seven and a half million dollars." ”

The lady was silent for a moment. The president was a little proud, he could finally get rid of them. The lady turned around and quietly asked her husband, "Is that all the cost of college?" and the husband nodded. The headmaster looked puzzled. The Leland Stanfords left Harvard and traveled to Palo Alto, California, where they founded a university called "A University in Memory of a Son Who No Longer Was Concerned About Harvard."

Note: Stanford University, whose full name is Leland Stanford University, is located in Stanford, California, USA, and is a world-renowned private research university. It is the second largest university in the United States by area, and is ranked as an academic center on the east and west coasts of the United States along with Harvard University. In 2010, Forbes magazine counted the universities with the most billionaires, and Stanford University ranked second, with 28 billionaires, second only to Harvard University, one of the top ten universities in the world with the most Nobel Prize winners. There is a saying among Americans that rich and good people go to Harvard, and the real family loves Stanford more.