Inventors -- United States -- Biography; Pupin, Michael, 1858-1935
Several years ago I was driving through the streets of London,
visiting England again after an absence of many years. Suddenly I saw
a crowd watching a Scotch dancer. The dancer was a young woman in
Highland costume, and she was dancing the sword dance exquisitely;
her husband was playing the bagpipes, marching up and down with all
the swagger of the Scotch Highlander. I stopped my cab, got out, and
watched. The memories of Corrie and Oban and of the gathering of the
clans there which I witnessed while at Arran came back, and I was
thrilled. Presently the dancer reached me in her tour soliciting
voluntary contributions. I threw a sovereign into her plate and she
looked surprised and asked me whether I had not made a mistake.
“Yes,” said I, “I did make a mistake when I went out with only one
sovereign in my pocket. If I had two you should have them both.” “Are
you a Scotchman, sir?” she asked jokingly, and when I said “No” she
smiled and said: “I did not think you were.” She knew that there was a
fundamental difference between a Scot and a Serb.
After I had been at Corrie for about a month a letter arrived from
my mother, written by my oldest sister, telling me how happy she was
that I had decided to spend my summer in Scotland for the purpose of
meditating over the life and the work of one of the greatest “saints of
science.” I meant Faraday when I wrote to her. She also told me that
Idvor was fearfully dusty on account of a long-continued drought, and
that the crops were poor and the vintage prospects even poorer, and
that Idvor was not a very cheerful place during that summer for anybody
who wished to meditate free from complaints of grumbling neighbors.
“Berlin, I am told, is much nearer to Idvor and when you are there you
can always run down to Idvor, much more easily than you can now,” she
said, closing her letter, in which logic and motherly love vied with
each other to furnish her with a consolation for my absence from Idvor
during that summer.
My mother’s letter made me feel guilty and it called for a
reconsideration of my first resolution, adopted a month earlier, which
authorized me to bid a temporary farewell to Faraday’s “Electrical
Researches”; and I passed another resolution rescinding my first.
But the question arose, how to carry it into effect. The answer was
obvious: bid good-by to Corrie. My friends, however, suggested a less
obvious but certainly a much more agreeable answer. “Go up and live in
the Macmillan homestead, and read your Faraday there in the morning
and come down to Corrie for dinner, late in the afternoon,” suggested
Madge, and the suggestion was adopted without a dissenting voice on the
part of my young friends.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account