formed, and many of them have remained pristine, just as when they were first introduced into the surface.”
He was exceptionally excited by this idea, and had written it up by the next day, but he didn’t send it to a journal that day, or the next day. It was still lying on his desk a week later. When she asked about it, he declared that it wasn’t ready, that it required more thought. One evening, after he had gone to the observatory, she read it and replaced it on the desk, at just the angle he had left it. It was clearly written, and the idea seemed simple to her—beautiful, too, and fun, in its way, with Hubert up the tree shooting into the mud. Anyone, she thought, could appreciate this idea. Still he wouldn’t send it. The papers sat on his desk just as she had left them, week after week.
FROM this, it was but a step to glancing into other papers that were lying around. Andrew saved everything. At first the stacks were daunting, full of numbers and equations and words that she didn’t understand, like “parallax.” But there were others as carelessly left about—for example, an old note from one of his professors to the president of the university in Columbia. It read, “Arrogant scoundrel. Stirs trouble among the students. A monster of self-seeking impudence.” There was no name in the letter, no real indication of whom the professor was referring to, but of course, upon reading it, she searched more assiduously, and soon enough found a packet of letters from Andrew to his mother from those days.
In the first two years, he wrote only about his daily thoughts and occasional pleasures and successes, as a boy away from home would. His tone was affectionate and thoughtful, and Margaret was pleased at what she had found. In the spring of his second year, though, he wrote, “Dearest Mother, I know you will be disappointed in me, but I must report that I have done what it seemed proper for me to do at the time, and although the consequences are not what I would have wished (and I hasten to report this to you, as you will soon hear from others), I do not, as yet, regret my action, but I know that you have frequently counseled me to conduct myself with more caution. I am writing to say that I have failed to heed your advice, and will possibly be sent home from the college.” It emerged in subsequent letters that Andrew had paid three other students to cede to him their allotted hours on the college telescope, a seven-and-a-half-inch model that he was eager to master, and in order to cover this up, he had helped them falsify their observations—letting them (or encouraging them to) copy his observations and present them as their own work. This arrangement had obtained for some three months, until the professor, growing suspicious of one and then another of the three students because of their inability to reproduce the observations they said they had made but didn’t seem to remember, discovered it. Andrew then could not resist pointing out to the professor that the observations were his, and were all of the first order—accurate as well as numerous and “of better quality than the Professor’s own work, which I of course would not have said had I not spoken in haste, but the remark was nevertheless true, and if he had not known it to be true, then he would not have offered to break my jaw for me.” The other students received failing grades, but Andrew had to receive an A—his observations were indeed of the first quality. That professor, however, refused ever to work with Andrew again, because he had been “deceptive.” Margaret guessed that it was this man who had written the original note. She could imagine their confrontation only too easily—Andrew would have loomed over the professor, employed his natural eloquence, said things he should not say, and in a deep and prideful voice. But Margaret was not entirely put off by the incident—she appreciated his honesty and his remorse. And anyway, in the intervening years, he had learned to govern his temper.
But her curiosity was piqued—after some days, she found herself rummaging in his desk again. She brought this up in an oblique way with Mrs. Lear as they enjoyed a bit of winter sunshine while sipping oolong tea on Mrs. Lear’s porch. The boys