“Now, I repeat, it is on that phase of Gibson’s personality and life work that I love to think, and to recall him as our loftiest incarnation of Gunnery character. He, perhaps, lacked the initiative force of Mr. Gunn, but when it came to the test of principle not even our old master surpassed the pupil. Do you remember how outspoken Gibson was when it came to any question of wrong? Do you recall how no form of trickery or meanness, either in individual conduct or in public life, failed to meet his contempt and his scorn? What one of us, in that life of his, passed, so much of it, in this community, can put the finger on one questionable word or act? When we can pay such tribute to a departed friend, I care not what his genius may have been, how far and wide his fame may have blown, or how long the mere work of hand and brain may endure, he has builded a monument set firmer than granite or marble in the service of his generation, and of the generations to come. “That strong character of Gibson revealed itself to me in many ways. In politics, for example, his path and my own on national questions often diverged. Yet in talks with him on that subject, most impressive was the revelation of his bed-rock sincerity of conviction; and never did that conviction fail to be enthused with the profoundest patriotism of motive. Take a somewhat narrower civic question, that of municipal reform, a theme as to which by the nature of personal vocation I have heard many men and met many and varied views. But never have I found a man who discussed that topic more intelligently, more broadly, and more often striking the keynote of progress than Gibson, whom the public and not a few friends, doubtless, have associated only with the hunt for nature’s secrets in the flower, the leaf, and the marvels of insect life. “Or let us take one other outward expression of that strong public character of his. It was a primal _motif_ in such a man to love the simplicities, and you will all remember as one vivid phase of it his intense desire to preserve the sweet and unaffected community life which has so long marked this village. He had seen how the wave of fashion and of assertive and ostentatious wealth had overcast those New England towns for which nature had done most, and how the supreme triumph of the French modiste, the babble of the four-o’clock tea, and the vanities of so-called ‘good’ society had come to satirize the summer charms of mountain and river and vale. Hence that aggressive desire of his, expressed alike in word and act, to conserve in their old simplicity and freedom the customs which we as Gunnery boys enjoyed in this gracious village. Though he be dead, that example and precept of his yet appeal to us. * * * * *