Inventors -- United States -- Biography; Pupin, Michael, 1858-1935
There seemed to be one street only where
business was done; the rest of the town appeared to me like so many
beautiful convents. The tramp of many miles through woods and meadows
without any breakfast had made me ravenously hungry and somewhat tired.
The peaceful aspect of the monastic-looking town invited me to sit
down and rest and enjoy some food. I bought a shining loaf of bread
and, selecting a seat under an elm near a building which looked like
the residence of the Archbishop of Prague, I started my breakfast.
It consisted of bread only, and I enjoyed it as I had never enjoyed
breakfast before. Many boys, looking like students, passed by on
their way to the ecclesiastical-looking building; one of them watched
my appetite as if he envied it, and inquired whether I should like
some Italian cheese with my bread. He evidently thought that I was
an Italian, being misled by my ruddy cheeks and dark-brown hair. I
answered that Serbian cheese would suit me better. He laughed and said
that Serbia and Serbian cheese were unknown at Princeton. I answered
that some day perhaps Princeton might hear from Serbia. It is a curious
fact that, in 1914, I was the first man who was invited to Princeton to
give an address on the subject of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. The
late Moses Taylor Pyne was my host, and I pointed out to him the elm
in front of Nassau Hall where I had breakfasted some forty years prior
to that time. The students received my address very enthusiastically;
Dernburg addressed them two weeks later, and their heckling broke up
the meeting.
After finishing the loaf, I basked in the warm rays of the mellow
April sun, and fell asleep and dreamed that in the building where the
students went there was a large assembly of people who had gathered
there for the purpose of conferring some academic honor upon me. When
I woke up, I thought of the letter which I had written to my mother
from Hamburg, a year before, promising that I would soon return rich
in learning and in distinguished honors. The dream reminded me that my
promise was carefully recorded in the mechanism which controlled my
consciousness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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