JULIAN PARK '10
To some of the college body the name of Henry Loomis Nelson is nothing more than a name, but the three upper classes, especially that considerable portion of them who at one time or another came under his influence, will not soon allow the memory of his personality to pass. The facts of his life are simple enough and as well known; the fruits of that life would take many pages to set forth. His power as educator, journalist, and man of public affairs reached infinitely further than most of us, who first saw in him the man of even, witty temperament, were used to realize.
Professor Nelson was graduated with the class of 1867, later taking the M.A. degree; the college further honored him and itself by conferring the degree of L.H.D. in 1902. Together with Mabie and Stetson of his class, he organized a little circle for literary discussion; and that group, each afterward to attain eminence, showed more vital interest in art and letters than can be found to-day. After taking his law degree at Columbia he went to Washington as newspaper correspondent and there began a great series of political and economic writings. Called to the editorial chair of Harper's Weekly in 1895, he resigned it after four years because, he said, he felt that he would be false to his own convictions if he wrote those of the publisher, false to the publisher if he used the magazine to voice his own. His writings include also a novel as well as treatises on political science. In 1902 he came back to his alma mater as head of the department of Government. He died on February 29, 1908.
In his devotion to the ideals of Williams as he saw them, Dr. Nelson was, many have said, more distinguished by manly but quiet zeal than any other graduate of his prominence in public life. He stood for scholarship, fine scholarship of course, but even above that he put honor, a gentleman's code of honor. He was unconditional in his contempt for hedging, for trickery, for meanness. Constantly he showed himself an idealist, as in his advocacy of an absolute honor system. But in all there was the play of a shrewd wit, the touch of sureness, lacking snobbery, of the man who knows where he stands, and a love of entertaining others. For only six years we knew him as a teacher, but the time was long enough for many of his ideals and ideas to take root, and the fruit of them will long be apparent.