ntil we were told so the next day by a man who was
not there. As the speaker closed, an old lady seated near me sighed
softly, adjusted her Paisley shawl and said, "That was the finest
address I ever heard, except one given in this very hall in Eighteen
Hundred Fifty-nine by Starr King."

And I said, "Well, a speech that you can remember for twenty-five years
must have been a good one!"

"It wasn't the address so much as the man," answered this mother in
Israel, and she heaved another small sigh.

And therein did the good old lady drop a confession. I doubt me much
whether any woman will remember any speech for a week--she just
remembers the man.

And this applies pretty nearly as much to men, too. Is there sex in
spirit? Hardly! Thoreau says the character of Jesus was essentially
feminine. Herbert Spencer avers, "The high intuitive quality which we
call genius is largely feminine in character." "Starr King was the child
of his mother, and his best qualities were feminine," said the Reverend
E. H. Chapin.

* * * * *

When Starr King's father died the boy was fifteen. There were five
younger children and Starr was made man of the house by Destiny's
acclaim. Responsibility ripens. This slim, slender youth became a man in
a day.

The father had been the pastor of the Charlestown Universalist Church. I
suppose it is hardly necessary to take a page and prove that this
clergyman in an unpopular church did not leave a large fortune to his
family. In truth, he left a legacy of debts. Starr King, the boy of
fifteen, left school and became clerk in a drygoods-store. The mother
cared for her household and took in sewing.

Joshua Bates, master of the Winthrop School, describes Starr King as he
was when the father's death cut off his schooldays: "Slight of build,
golden-haired, active, agile, with a homely face which everybody thought
was 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 kind of boy gets along all right anywhere--God is on his side. The
hours in the drygoods-store were long, and on Saturday nights it was
nearly midnight before Starr would reach home. But there was a light in
the window for him, even if whale-oil was scarce, and the mother was at
her sewing. Together they ate their midnight lunch, and counted the
earnings of the week.

And the surprise of both that they were getting a li