A lady and her husband in usual clothes walked into the president of Harvard's outer office. "We want to see the president," the lady said softly. Looking at the usual couple, the secretary said, "He'll be busy all day."" We'll wait," the lady replied.
For hours, the secretary did nothing for them, hoping that they would finally go away. They didn't. "Maybe if they just see you for a few minutes, they'll leave," the secretary finally told the president.
The president looked down at the couple. The lady told him, "We had a son that had studied in Harvard for one year. He loved Harvard. But he was accidentally killed. And my husband and I would like to build something for him in Harvard. "Madam," the president said angrily, "we can't put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and died."
"Oh, no," the lady explained quickly, "we mean we would give a building to Harvard." The president looked at their usual clothes, and then said, "A building! Do you know how much a building costs? It took us over seven and a half million dollars to build Harvard."
The lady turned to her husband and said quietly, "Is that all it costs to start a university?" Her husband nodded. Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford walked away, traveling to Palo Alto, California where they built a university with their name—a memorial(纪念)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.