“The most potent factor in effecting that determination,” to establish this beyond the possibility of cavil or denial, we have told here once again his inspiring story.  The fact that as late as 1913, the Legislature of California appropriated $10,000 to place a bust of Starr King in our National Capitol at Washington would seem to indicate that the people have resolved that this man shall go down to latest generations as par excellence, — “our hero.”

It would be natural, and entirely proper, to close by recounting the numerous tributes that in the years since King’s death have been paid to his memory, in magazines, memoirs, speeches and poems, but it would seem like sweetness too long drawn out.  And, perhaps, few could resist the feeling that no human being ever really deserved such “largeness of love.”  But they seem so real, they ring so true, that the conviction grows almost to a certainty that here was one who drew men to him by the incarnate sweetness and nobility of his nature.  “Doubtless,” writes his friend, and co-worker in the Sanitary Commission, Dr. Henry W. Bellows, “he had his own consciousness of imperfection and sin — for he was human, but I have yet to know and yet to hear the first suggestion of what his faults and errors were.”

In no spirit of fulsome adulation did a prominent San Franciscan write, on the Sunday following King’s departure to “what lies beyond,” these tender words, “Bells sadly ringing this Sabbath morning remind me that one pulpit stands empty; and that it must stand empty, to all intents and purposes, until the church walls crumble, and pulpit, pillars, and all are resolved into dust.”

Another prominent resident of the State, writing a half century later, — seeing all after the sobering lapse of years, writing as though the cloud of sorrow for his friend had never been lifted, thus pays his sincere tribute of respect: 

“And so, in the prime of life, at the zenith of his achievement, before its noon, this sweet, great soul passed away, leaving to those who loved him, dust and anguish.  Well do we remember that almost at his death a minor earthquake shook the city, and men said, ’Even the earth shudders at the thought that Starr King is dead.’ "

Of the many poetical tributes, two at least, are of permanent significance.  One by his friend Bret Harte, dear companion of those great years in San Francisco, on “A Pen of Thomas Starr King,” is at once so penetrating and so just that it well deserves here a place: 

“This is the reed the dead musician dropped,
With tuneful magic in its sheath still hidden;
The prompt allegro of its music stopped,
Its melodies unbidden.

But who shall finish the unfinished strain,
Or wake the instrument to awe and wonder,
And bid the slender barrel breathe again,
An organ-pipe of thunder!

His pen! what humbler memories cling about
Its golden curves! what shapes and laughing graces
Slipped from its point, when his full heart went out
In smiles and courtly phrases.