Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator

"BIRTHS. At Staten Island, July 28, 1874, Alice Maude, daugh-
ter of James Gore King Duer and Elizabeth Duer."

The sixteen years which followed that twenty-eighth of July
were important and uneventful. Quiet and comfort, exercise in
plenty, the mild gaiety of the end of the nineteenth century,
were the girl's daily lot. On the estate at Weehawken, saved
from the wreck of the Duer fortune, old servants, old silver
and furniture, and old ways made a pleasant background.

The Duers and their cousins, the Kings, owned two large
properties adjoining each other on the bluffs overlooking the
Hudson. A tall tower, which you can see any day from New
York, walking west on Forty-seventh Street, marks the north-
ern boundary of Hauxhurst, the Duer estate.

Both families had been identified with the history and de-
velopment of New York since colonial times. Colonel William
Duer had married the daughter of William Alexander, Lord
Sterling, the defender of New York and one of Washington's
most trusted officers. Lady Kitty Duer's son was president of
Columbia College, and his cousin, Charles King, later held the
same office. James Gore King, known as "the Almighty of Wall
Street," became a private banker and made a large fortune. At
his death Alice's grandfather, who had married King's daughter,
became head of the firm and her father succeeded him.

The dueling ground to which New Yorkers and the neigh-
boring countryside repaired lay on the narrow strip by the
river, where the railroad tracks now run. Alice and her sisters
played about the stone, marking the spot where on that hot
July morning Hamilton fell as his son Philip had fallen before
him on that same field of honor. Just above, a great rock jutted

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