Parting Advice

Summary

As narrated elsewhere in these notes, after leaving Princeton University I marked time as a surveyor while waiting for a teaching position to open up for me. I finally secured a one-year appointment at Bethany College in West Virginia, filling in while the regular man was on leave working on his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.

In the fall of 1938, before leaving for West Virginia, I decided to make a short nostalgic last visit to Princeton, and while there perhaps briefly to see Dr. Einstein again. I was lucky, for I found the scientist at home. He greeted me warmly and suggested we take a short stroll together. After walking a bit, he asked me how life had been since I left Princeton. I told him about my difficulty in securing a teaching position, and how I had been spending my time as a surveyor. He asked me if I enjoyed the work, and I told him it had its pleasant features, but that it was in no way as pleasing as my life at Princeton had been. I bemoaned the lack of kindred minds to talk mathematics with. In short, I more or less griped about my situation.

“I understand,” Dr. Einstein said. “Now before we part, there is something I want to show you.”

We had been approaching the end of our little ramble and were walking down Mercer Street to his house.