The Death of Professor Wells

On Sunday, June 11, died at his home in Hanover, David Collin Wells, professor of sociology in Dartmouth College. The simple announcement, however, conveys no idea of the loss sustained by College and community, for Professor Wells was one of the most useful as well as the best beloved men in Hanover.

He was born in Fayetteville, New York, September 23, 1858, prepared for college at Phillips Andover and was graduated from Yale in 1880. After teaching the classics for two years in Indianapolis, he studied for the ministry at Union Seminary, New York, and later at Andover Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1885. After two more yeans of study and travel, he returned to Phillips 'Andover as teacher of History. In the same year, 1887, he married Elizabeth Tucker, sister of Dr. William Jewett Tucker. In 1890 Professor Wells went to Bowdoin College as professor of Political Science, serving there for three years, when he was .called to Dartmouth to fill the chair of Sociol- ogy. He was a member of the Institut International de Sociologie, of Paris; of the Washington- Philosophical Society, a member of the executive committee of the Americal Sociological Society and an advisory editor of the American Journalof Sociology.

For the past two years Professor Wells has been in failing health, yet, with superb courage, he carried his regular schedule of classroom work, and attended to his duties as faculty member and townsman.

To a man of his unusual character and high and varied attainments it is difficult to do full justice in the written word. Absolutely unaffected, straightforward, honest, he harbored no mean subtleties of intention, no hidden motives of selfishness. He hated all that was small and self-seeking. The devious way was to him unknown. He met men and conditions frankly and squarely, on their merits, without equivocation or guile. He was the same man in the classroom as out of it; for the relation of teacher and pupil he substituted that of friend and friend. Just, sympathetic, kindly, interested in his students as something far more than mouthpieces for recitation, he won their confidence and their affection as few teachers have the privilege of doing. What he was to his colleagues of the faculty is shown in their ready tributes of praise, some of which are here printed as a fitting memorial:

TRIBUTES TO PROFESSOR WELLS

In these days of narrow specialization comparatively few college teachers appreciate the value of subjects other than their own or take interest in matters outside their own study or classroom or . their own group of friends. Professor David Collin Wells was a rare combination of the college professor of the past and the specialist of the present. His scholarship and his interests were broad and sympathetic, while at the same time his devotion to his chosen subject was intense, and in it he was a recognized authority. His sound common sense, his excellent judgment, his knowledge of men made him an invaluable .member of the committees of the faculty. In this work and in all his activity in the life of Hanover, as an educator and a citizen, he was absolutely unselfish and untiring. His persistence in attending to what he regarded as his duties during the past two years was pure heroism, and during all that time his cheerfulness never faltered and his most intimate friends found it hard to realize that he was under the constant strain of illness. His most striking characteristics were his unfailing cheerfulness and his unselfish devotion to duty By the death of Professor Wells the College has lost one of its most valuable members and the town one of its most useful citizens.

HARRY E. BURTON

David Collin Wells had the two gifts of friendliness and of the expression of friendliness. With him it was not necessary to inquire what underlay his manner, or to learn that he was better than he seemed. He took the initiative in friendliness, and as it came from within he maintained it. He remembered where others, often, mean to remember.' He was the man who would bring around a book with a chapter marked for reading or happen in with a plant or some seeds, or save an alchemical picture from his complicated German calendar, or appreciate the eagerness with which a friend across the sea receives an unexpected letter from the home town.

And his friendliness had the rare quality-the rarest quality—of freedom from class distinction of any kind; towards a child in the street, a student in his class, the man that dug in the garden or chopped in the woods it was of the same open, unaffected, equal nature.

His love of the broad world out of doors was a passion. He loved still nature and he looked out with joy upon a fair scene of water and meadow and upland, but he craved the trail, the hill-top, the winter forest. And his sympathies were with the energies of mother nature, —the coming and going of the birds, the activities of the forest creatures, the peculiar doings of the trees and plants, the running of the waters and the travel of . the storms across the continent.

He was by nature active, and his activity was all helpful. He could have been chosen president of the Lend-a-Hand branch of humanity. Always he carried a full load of service and responsibility for others. During his strength there seemed to be no limit to the amount of such work that he would take on and carry forward without worry or neglect. Even in his failing health he continued more of this work than almost any other man in the com- munity. It was good for him to have the satisfaction; and for us to have the remembrance for an example.

EDWIN J. BARTLETT

Professor Wells' connection with Dartmouth began in the fall term of 1893, the term with which the class of '97 entered college, but it was not until junior year that we met him as an instructor. Between Professor Wells and the class an unusually close friendship was immediately apparent, a friendship which became closer and stronger with the passing years, so that at its tenth reunion he was asked to preside as toastmaster and was made an honorary member of the class. His broad, quick sympathies enabled him at all times and under all conditions to instantly find the personal viewpoint of the men as. they so naturally turned to him to share their joys or seek his advice. In the death of Professor Wells each member of '97 has suffered the loss of a personal friend who unselfishly gave from his broad wisdom and experience to all who came within range of his splendid personality.

JOHN M. POOR