James Lick.
James Lick, born in Pennsylvania in 1796, was one of the strange characters of California. He went there in 1847, after having been a manufacturer of pianos in this country and different parts of South America. He took $30,000 to San Francisco, which he invested in real estate, foreseeing that it was to become the great city of the Pacific Slope. He bought lots by the mile. His profits were enormous. He became one of the great millionaires of California. He set aside $2,000,000 in 1874, to be held by seven trustees, and to be devoted to certain public and charitable purposes. In 1875 he desired to make some changes in his schedule of gifts, and when the trustees expressed some doubts as to their legal right to give assent, at his request they resigned. The next year he died, and then followed a litigation by his son and other heirs, which was finally so adjusted as to leave a large sum to be devoted to various public and charitable projects. He left $60,000 to be devoted to a statue of Francis Scott Key, the author of the “Star Spangled Banner.” He was very eccentric, due, it is said, to an early disappointment in love. He sought the hand of a miller’s daughter, but was dismissed by the father, because young Lick did not own a mill. When he became enormously wealthy, James Lick built a large mill, and adorned it with mahogany and costly woods as a memorial of his youthful attachment. He seemed to derive almost childish pleasure in contemplating this splendid building, which would have so far outshone any that could ever have been owned by the man who had once spurned him for his poverty. The poor young men of one generation are often the millionaires of the next. One of the great monuments to his memory is the great Lick Observatory.