How Einstein tipped courier with his theory of happiness

A NOTE that Albert Einstein gave to a courier in Tokyo, briefly describing his theory on happy living, has surfaced after 95 years and is up for auction in Jerusalem.

The year was 1922, and the Germanborn physicist, most famous for his theory of relativity, was on a lecture tour in Japan. He had recently been told that he was to receive the Nobel Prize for physics, and his fame outside of scientific circles was growing.

A Japanese courier arrived at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo to deliver Einstein a message. The courier either refused to accept a tip, in line with local practice, or Einstein had no small change available. Either way, he didn’t want the messenger to leave emptyhanded, so he wrote him two notes.

“Maybe if you’re lucky those notes will become much more valuable than just a regular tip,” Einstein told the messenger, according to the anonymous seller, a relative of the messenger and resident of Hamburg.

One note, in German on the stationary of the Imperial Hotel Tokyo, says that “a quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest”.

The other, also in German on a blank piece of paper, simply reads: “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

The two notes will go on sale tomorrow at the Winner’s auction house in Jerusalem, alongside two letters Einstein wrote in later years.