Part I
In Old New England



When Starr King entered the Golden Gate, April 28, 1860, he had passed
by a few months his thirty-fifth birthday. A young man in the morning of
his power he felt strangely old, for he wrote to a friend just a little
later: "I have passed meridian. It is after twelve o'clock in the large
day of my mortal life. I am no longer a young man. It is now afternoon
with me, and the shadows turn toward the east."

There was abundant reason for this premature feeling of age. Even at
thirty-five King had been a long time among the most earnest of workers.
Born in New York City, December 17, 1824, of English and German
ancestry, son of a Universalist Minister who was compelled to struggle
along on a very meager salary, the lad felt very early in life labor's
stern discipline. At fifteen he was obliged to leave school that by
daily toil he might help to support his now widowed mother and five
younger brothers and sisters. Brief as was his record in school, we note
the following prophetic facts: he displayed singular aptitude for study,
he was conscientious yet vivacious, he was by nature adverse to anything
rude or coarse. Joshua Bates, King's last teacher, describes the lad as
"slight of build, golden haired, with a homely face which everybody
thought handsome on account of the beaming eyes, the winning smile and
the earnest desire of always wanting to do what was best and right."

This is our earliest testimony to the lovable character of the man whose
life-story we are now considering. It will impress us more and more as
East and West, Boston and San Francisco, in varying phrase tell again