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爱迪生的英雄母亲
赵文恒(编译)
一天,小爱迪生放学后回家,带给母亲一封信:“老师给我这封信,并说只能交给您。”
爱迪生看到,母亲双眼含泪,然后对着自己大声念出了信中内容:“你儿子是个天才,可惜学校太小,容纳不了他,也没有足够的优秀老师培养他,请您自己教他吧。”
多年过去了,爱迪生的母亲已经去世,而他本人也成为20世纪最伟大的发明家之一。
有一天,他在整理家里旧物的时候,忽然发现了桌子抽屉角落里有一封折叠的信纸,于是取出打开来看,信中写道:“你儿子是个精神病,我们不让他再来学校了。”
爱迪生痛哭了几个小时,然后在日记中写道:“托马斯·阿尔瓦·爱迪生确实是个精神病孩子,但经过一个英雄母亲的教育,让他最终能够成为本世纪的天才。”
Edison’s Mother
One day Thomas Edison came home and gave a paper to his mother. He told her, “My teacher gave this paper to me and told me to only give it to my mother.”
His mother’s eyes were tearful as she read the letter out loud to her child: Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have enough good teachers for training him. Please teach him yourself.
After many, many years, after Edison’s mother died and he was now one of the greatest inventors of the century, one day he was looking through old family things. Suddenly he saw a folded paper in the corner of a drawer in a desk. He took it and opened it up.
On the paper was written: Your son is addled [mentally ill]. We won’t let him come to school any more.
Edison cried for hours and then he wrote in his diary: “Thomas Alva Edison was an addled child that, by a hero mother, became the genius of the century.”