February  P?9 1?' ^  Memorial  Meeting  to  Professor  Remington.  91 
and  more  come  to  realize  that  Professor  Remington  was  the  great 
stabilizer.  You  know  they  are  using  the  gyroscope  now  to  stabilize 
ships  upon  the  sea.  The  tendency  of  the  gyroscope  is  to  remain, 
by  reason  of  inertia,  in  statu  quo,  and  when  it  revolves  it  remains 
in  that  position  and  it  takes  great  force  to  push  it  aside,  one  way  or 
the  other;  so  if  you  have  a  gyroscope  in  full  action  it  will  hold  the 
ship  in  position. 
The  effect  that  Dr.  Remington  had  upon  the  great  work  of 
revision  was  that  of  the  gyroscope.  He  held  it  true  to  its  course, 
and  no  one  knows  more  than  I  the  forbearance  he  had  to  exercise 
to  hold  it  so.  There  were  very  many  intricate  questions  to  decide, 
and  if  there  had  been  a  man  of  less  ability  than  Professor  Reming- 
ton at  the  helm,  he  could  not  have  steered  the  ship  clear  of  all 
dangers  and  brought  the  revision  committee  through.  That  alone 
stamped  him  as  a  man  of  great  character  and  force.  No  one  who 
took  any  part  in  these  deliberations  would  fail  to  recognize  his  strong 
guiding  power  and  resistance  to  pressure. 
One  of  our  great  authors,  Emerson,  I  think  it  was,  has  de- 
scribed character  as  the  grass,  which  .is  flexible  and  not  firm ;  every 
wind  moves  it.  As  it  grows  up  it  will  not  yield  as  it  did  before. 
So  with  human  character.  It  is  not  so  much  education  and  heredity, 
but  the  result  of  experience,  and  when  guided  by  a  heart  which  is 
always  true  and  a  brain  which  is  always  clear,  every  experience  of 
life  builds  character.  No  wonder  that  Professor  Remington  ap- 
proached the  end  of  his  life  with  such  a  character;  his  great  care 
was  always  to  avoid  the  wrong  and  uphold  the  right.  This  is  the 
view  I  have  gained  of  him  during  the  years  of  association  with  him. 
One  of  his  great  monuments  is  the  Ninth  Revision  of  the  U. 
S-.  Pharmacopoeia.  It  is  his  book.  Louis  XIV  spoke  of  the  state 
and  said  1  C'est  moi ' — '  It  is  I.'  So,  in  speaking  of  the  U.  S. 
Pharmacopoeia,  we  can  say  '  C'est  lui ' — '  It  is  he.'  And  so,  as  the 
official  head  of  the  organization  which  produced  this  book,  I  have 
come  to  pay  tribute  to  his  memory. 
"  That  I  can  do  rather  easily,  but  when  I  come  to  the  second 
part  of  my  theme  I  feel  it  almost  impossible  to  say  what  I  should 
like  to  say,  and  that  is  about  Professor  Remington  as  a  friend.  I 
have  known  him  considerably  over  a  third  of  a  century.  His  was 
a  friendship  which  grew  upon  one,  as  one  knew  more  and  more  his 
worth  and  loyalty,  and  I  could  have  shown  no  better  illustration  of 
