Starr King in California | Page 4

Lyceum flourished in the United States as never before or since. Large numbers of lecture courses, extending even to the small cities and towns, were liberally patronized and generously supported. In many communities this was the one diversion and the one extravagance. To fill the new demand an extraordinary group of public speakers appeared; Emerson, Edward Everett, Wendell Phillips, Dr. Chapin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, George William Curtis, Henry Ward Beecher, Frederick Douglas, Theodore Parker and others, whose names are reverently spoken to this day by aged men and women who remember the uplift given them in youth by these giants of the platform.
That he was always wanted with such rivals as those is proof enough of King's power with the people, of his fame as an orator, even before his greater development and his more wonderful achievements in California. His lecture circuit extended from Boston to Chicago. His principal subjects were "Goethe," "Socrates," "Substance and Show," a lecture which ranks next to Wendell Phillips' "Lost Arts" in popularity. Not withstanding the academic titles King gave his lectures they seemed to have been popular with all classes. "Grand, inspiring, instructive," lectures," said the learned. "Thems' idees," said unlettered men of sound sense. It was thought to be a remarkable triumph of platform eloquence that King could make such themes fascinating to Massachusetts farmers and Cape Cod fishermen. In fine phrase it was said of him that he lectured upon such themes as Plato and Socrates "with a prematureness of scholarship, a delicacy of discernment, a sweet innocent combination of confidence and diffidence, which were inexpressibly charming."
It may be claimed with all candor that few public teachers have ever been able so to enlist scientific truth in the service of the spirit. That spirit and life are the great realities, that all else is mainly show, at best but the changing vesture of spirit, is set forth in King's lectures so completely that he may be said to have made, even at this early age, a genuine and lasting contribution to the thought of his time. All this be it noted before he had set foot upon the Pacific Coast, where he was destined to do his real work.
One other service King had rendered the country, and especially New England, should here be gratefully recalled. Always in delicate health, he had formed the habit of spending his vacations in the White Hills of New Hampshire. Benefited in mind and body, and charmed by the rare beauty of a region then unknown, he endeavored to reveal to the people of Boston, and other Eastern cities, the neglected loveliness lying at their very doors. The result was King's "The White Hills, Their Legends, Landscape and Poetry." Although this pioneer nature-book is now probably quite forgotten, even by the multitudes who visit the scenes it so glowingly describes, it is well to remember that it was, indeed, one of the first attempts to entice the city dweller "back to nature." Published in 1859, it followed Thoreau's at that time unread "Walden" by only five years, while it preceded Murray's "Adventures in the Wilderness," and the earliest of John Burroughs' delightful volumes, by a full generation. It was in every way a commendable, if not great, adventure in authorship.
From this brief review it is evident that when Starr King preached his last sermon in Boston, March 25, 1860, he had made for himself an enviable reputation in three difficult fields of work, as preacher, lecturer and writer. The feeling of Boston and New England upon his departure was fittingly expressed by Edwin Percy Whipple in a leading journal of the day in which this eminent author "appealed to thousands in proof of the assertion that though in charge of a large parish, and with a lecture parish which extended from Bangor to St. Louis, he still seemed to have time for every noble work, to be open to every demand of misfortune, tender to every pretension of weakness, responsive to every call of sympathy, and true to every obligation of friendship; all will indulge the hope that California, cordial as must be the welcome she extends him, will still not be able to keep him long from Massachusetts."
On the day before he sailed from New York a "Breakfast Reception" was given him at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, at which three hundred guests were seated at the tables. The poet, William Cullen Bryant presided, and other men hardly less distinguished testified to the nature of King's work, and to the varied charm of his unique personality. Best of all, perhaps, was the tribute of his friend and neighbor, Dr. Frederick H. Hedge. "Happy Soul! himself a benediction wherever he goes; a living evangel of kind affections, better than all prophecy and all knowledge, the Angel of the