the letter of refusal came, the Attorney-
General and I went together to the White House and showed
the President the letter. In the meantime a very strong recommendation
of Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., now of the Supreme Court,
had been received by the President. He felt a good deal of
interest in Holmes. I think they had both been wounded in
the same battle. But, at any rate, they were comrades. The
President then said: "I rather think Holmes is the man." I
then gave him my opinion of Mr. Nelson, and the President
said to Devens: "Do you agree, Mr. Attorney-General?" Devens
said: "I do." And the President said: "Then Nelson be it."
Mr. Nelson, to my surprise, accepted the appointment.

Judge Nelson was a master of equity and bankruptcy. No doctrine
was too subtle or abstruse for him. The matter of marshalling
assets, or the tacking of mortgages, and such things which
require a good deal of the genius of the mathematician, were
clear in his apprehension. He was one of the two or three
men in the State who ever understood the complications of
the old loan-fund associations. He was especially a master
of legal remedies. He held on like a bull-dog to a case in
the justice of which he believed. When you had got a verdict
and judgment in the Supreme Court against one of Nelson's
clients, he was just ready to begin work. Then look out for
him. He had with this trait also a great modesty and diffidence.
If anybody put to him confidently a proposition against his
belief, Nelson was apt to be silent, but, as Mr. Emerson
said of Samuel Hoar, "with an unaltered belief." He would
come out with his reply days after. When he came to state
the strong point in arguing his case, he would sink his voice
so it could hardly be heard, and look away like a bashful
maiden giving her consent. Judge Bigelow told me, very early
in Nelson's career, that he wished I would ask my friend to
make his arguments a little longer, and to raise his voice
so the court could hear him better. They always found his
arguments full of instruction, and disliked to lose anything
so good a lawyer had to say. His value as a Judge was largely
in consultation and in his sound opinions. I suppose that,
like his predecessor, Judge Lowell, he was not the very best
of Judges to preside at jury trials, or to guide juries in
their deliberations. Indeed, Nelson had many of the intellectual
traits--the same merits and the same defects that Lowell