A Genius in the Family
Autor: Maxim, Hiram Percy
Nakladatelství:
Thomas C. Breuer
ISBN:
Původní cena:
88 Kč
Vaše cena:
80 Kč
Popis knihy:
PREFACE:Most of us men become fathers at one time or another. As far as my information goes, none of us has very much experience in the business when he embarks upon it. I am sure my father merely blundered into fatherhood without giving the matter any serious consideration. He gave every evidence of conceiving fatherhood to be a means provided by nature for perpetrating humorous misconceptions upon young and inexperienced offspring. As the first of these offspring I was the butt of a host of most amazing undertakings. From birth to the age of twelve, when my father went abroad, to remain permanently, as it turned out, I lived an utterly different sort of family life from that of any of my young friends. I am prepared to believe that no boy was ever brought up as I was. Having had no previous experience in being brought up, I was not conscious that there was anything unique about my situation, and it was not until after my father left the family and we gradually settled down to the conventional, that I realized what an unusual life we had been living. It would be unfortunate, it has seemed to me, were the atmosphere of my father's house not recorded and made available, for I am persuaded that the examples of clever invention, amazing audacity, extraordinary humor, and passionate persistence of purpose (and heaven-born patience on the part of my mother) may be of interest outside the family. It is in this spirit that I present this intimate picture of the family life of my father, the late Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, one of America's distinguished engineers and scientists. --Hiram Percy Maxim a selection from PART I - THIRD STREET, BROOKLYN:I Suspect I had one of the most unusual fathers anybody ever had. I was his firstborn. He knew considerably less than nothing about children and he had to learn how to be a father. He learned on me. He did not learn easily. In fact, as I look back upon it, he never thoroughly learned how to be a father. As for me, although I had no previous experience, I do not remember having very much difficulty in learning to be a son. I accepted my father as a general run-of-the-mine father; he wore trousers, had a deep voice and a beard, and otherwise looked like other fathers. When we first met he did not impress me particularly. Indeed, either he was so colorless or I was so unobserving that it was well over two years after we first met that I noticed he was a member of the family. As the reader will discover, he was anything but colorless. I must have been unobserving, because I utterly failed to note the adding of such an important item to our family as my sister Florence. I distinctly remember when there were but three of us, my father, my mother, and myself; but to save my life I cannot remember the occasion of my sister's joining the family, although I was nearly four at the time. As for my second sister, who arrived two and a half years later, I remember her coming very clearly, as I had the impression the house had caught on fire. My father saw to it very early in my life that there should be an erroneous impression in my mind concerning the words ""papa"" and ""man."" I was allowed to acquire the impression that the words were synonyms. On a certain occasion this led to a misunderstanding between me and the driver of a coal-truck. I happened to be out on the sidewalk in front of our house in Brooklyn, New York, when this driver delivered our coal. Shoveling the coal down the coal-hole was an interesting operation to me. I became impressed also with the evident importance of our family, because of the large amount of coal which we seemed to need. I spoke to the driver of the coal-truck on the subject, addressing him as ""papa."" It surprised him very much. He denied that he was a papa, was very positive that he was not my papa, and went so far as to state that he was not married...Hodnocení uživatelů:
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