THE ALUMNI JOURNAL 1!) 



My associations with the New York College of Pharmacy com- 

 menced almost with my pharmaceutical career. Of course, even 

 as a boy in a drug store, I knew of the achievements of our eminent 

 friend who is celebrating his birthday with us. As a student in 

 Philadelphia, I recall sitting with open mouthed wonder at the 

 modest recital of an intrepid traveller who had made a remarkable 

 trip ? cross South America and who had just been called to the 

 faculty of the New York College of Pharmacy. As I listened to him 

 I wondered that one so young could have accomplished such a 

 feat and I also asked myself whether I would ever have the honor 

 of not merely knowing him, but of having him know me. And to 

 think that I should now be his colleague, that I should now recog- 

 nize him as my Dean, seems too good to be true. 



When preparing for my German University career, there was no 

 one who gave me such valued information as did my distinguished 

 predecessor, Professor Coblentz, while when I reached Gottingen, 

 I found the custodian of the Gottingen chemical traditions, Herr 

 MahJmann the janitor of the Chemical Institute waxed fairly 

 eloquent over the days of Woehler and his American students — 

 Chandler, Remsen, Mears and others. "Those were the golden 

 days of chemistry," declared Herr Mahlmann, who emphasized to 

 us younger chemists the futility of ever reaching the fullness of 

 stature attained by our countrymen of those days. This dictum 

 we accepted with due humility, and it is therefore a great joy to 

 me to find myself selected as successor to Dr. Chandler and t<> 

 Dr. Coblentz. And as I think it over, I am tempted to paraphrase 

 the graceful remark of Ambassador Choate, that if he could not 

 be Joseph Choate, he would prefer to be the second husband of 

 Mrs. Choate, by saying that since I realize I cannot be a Chandler 

 or a Coblentz, I am profoundly grateful at being deemed worthy 

 to serve as their successor. 



Theodore Roosevelt once said at a Yale celebration that there 

 had been no crisis in his life that he — a Harvard man — had not had 

 a Yale man at his elbow and I can say that in my pharmaceutical 

 career there has never been an occasion that I have not had a 

 New York College of Pharmacy man as co-laborer. 



Down in New Orleans, I worked with Metz, now head of the 

 department of Chemistry of Tulane University — and with Asher, 

 Dean of the New Orleans College of Pharmacy. On my first 

 journey to a meeting of the American Pharmaceutical Associa- 

 tion at Minnesota in 1897, I found there, ready to greet us, two 

 New York men. Frost and Wulling, and with both of whom it 

 has since been my privilege to work. In Cleveland, I had as 

 colleague for fourteen years, Feil, a gold medalist of the New York 

 College of Pharmacy ; while in Association work, 1 had the co- 



