Appreciation of Professor Nash by Hobart Board, Newspaper

Appreciation of Professor Nash
HOBART COLLECKE TRUSTEES PASS RESOLUTIONS ON DEATH OF ONE LONG ASSOCIATED WITH INSTITUTION.

At an adjourned meeting of the Board of Trustees of Hobart College, held at the college library on Thursday, the 15th, the following minute on the death of Professor Nash was ordered spread upon the record:

“Since the last semi-annual meeting of this board there has occurred the death of Francis Philip Nash, professor Emeritus of the Latin Language and Literature. Possibly the word ‘emeritus’ after his name in our catalogue is a sufficient testimonial,–retired after long years of honorable service and his name retained on the rolls.’

“A beautiful appreciation of Professor Nash appears in the Hobart Herald of today, written by his brilliant co-worker of forty years, a co-worker in maintaining the standard and ideals of the college, and his true companion for almost a life time in the field of literature, of the languages and of art.

“But this appreciation is an intimate personal view of the character and accomplishments, and the work of this gifted man whose loss we mourn. To us, the trustees, the view must be more in perspective, running through the long vista of forty years,–almost one-half of the life of the college; and the question arises ‘What has Professor Nash done for the college?’ It might better be asked ‘What has he not done?’

Who among the teachers that Hobart has been fortunate to have in its faculty within the memory of the present generation, has shone out more brightly from the background of Mediocrity than foe?

What name has been more powerful to conjure with in the outside world than his? With his broad, deep and polished scholarship, his high-mindedness, his patience, his courtesy, his generous hospitality, giving freely not only from, the bounties of his home! but, to those who sought it, from the rich store house of his mind, Professor Nash has been a moist valuable possession to the college and to the community.

“But there is also a personal loss in his death to each one of us. Some in this Board have had the privilege of his class-rooms in their undergraduate days, others- personal and friendly relations with him for nearly half a century, others were bound to him by family ties and connections, and all have had an acquaintance which ripened into affection as time advanced.

“As we have said, it has been the good fortune of Hobart College since its foundation, to have in its faculty from time to time a galaxy of stars, few but always steadfast whom neither outside allurements nor adverse conditions within could deflect from their appointed course. None however were brighter, none truer, none more unselfish and faithful in their endeavor to maintain sound scholarship and high ideals than he whose death we record.

‘”A lawyer, a linguist, a mathematician, a chemist, an historian, a skilled musician, a politician in the truest sense, a benefactor to his fellow men, and withal and always a true gentleman, and this not only -because he could meet on equal terms the aristocracy of birth, the aristocracy of wealth and the aristocracy of letters, but because he filled that broader and finer definition of a gentleman, ‘a man who always, does the kindest thing in the -kindest way.’

“These things can be said of Professor Nash now that he is gone, and could at all times have been said without flattery, because they are true.

“We extend to his widow and children our heartfelt sympathy, and beg the privilege of sharing in their loss. To them and to the college has been left a legacy of work well done, of a life well spent and a record of quiet achievement which many another less gifted-, would have made tell for his own worldly advancement and renown.”