U'iiichcll Memorial 



115 



little of him. When he finally returned to Minneapolis, it was 

 manifest at once how strong an affection he had acquired for the 

 people and the city in which he had spent the most numerous and 

 the most active years of his life. He sought out the friends with 

 whom he had worked in the Academy, recalled the struggles 

 through which they had passed, said a friendly good-bye and 

 gave a final hand-grip. The writer can never forget the cordial 

 greeting which he extended to him as they met on Nicollet ave- 

 nue, nor the impressive and sad reply that he made to the ques- 

 tion : What are you doing now? as he braced himself with his 

 cane — "Just trying to live." 



The chief event connected with Dr. Elliott's presidency of 

 the Academy was the institution of measures for the erection of 

 a public building for the combined use of the Athenaeum, the 

 Academy and the Society of Fine Arts. This movement, in 

 which the Academy was joint instigator with the other institu- 

 tions, was fostered by a committee consisting of President El- 

 liott, T. V). Walker and S. C. Gale, and resulted in the erection 

 of the present Minneapolis Public Library, put up and maintained 

 at the public expense. 



A. W. Williamson, at the date of the organization of the 

 Academy, was an instructor in the University, in mathematics, 

 and from a scientific turn of mind went cordially into the project 

 of establishing such an institution. Mr. Williamson's profes- 

 sional appointments have kept him away from the Academy and 

 from the city during many years. In our Volume II is published 

 a learned paper by him prepared when he was Adjunct Profes- 

 sor of Mathematics at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, 

 entitled "Is the Dakota Related to Indo-European Languages?" 

 His leaning toward the study of the Dakota language was de- 

 rived from his boyhood familiarity with the Sioux Indians, his 

 father. Rev. T. S. Williamson, having been the celebrated mis- 

 sionary to these people in the territorial and early statehood days 

 of Minnesota. This paper, as he says, was a preliminary result 

 of his father's dying request to complete an article he was pre- 

 paring showing that the Dakotas are of European origin. In 

 bringing the article to a close, among the conclusions which his 

 father dictated to him or had embodied in his manuscript, was 

 one which at that date seems quite remarkable, to the effect that 



