THOMAS STARR KING.

HE Editor desires to assure the public that he has left no stone unturned in the effort to obtain an original sketch of REV. THOMAS STARR KING. The career of this man was so brilliant and eventful-in the brief compass of forty years, he accomplished such mighty purposesthat his life and deeds deserve to be chronicled by a gifted and practiced pen, entirely familiar and in harmony with the theme.

For the purpose of securing such a sketch, the Editor approached or communicated with many of the most polished and effective writers of the Pacific-and also of the Atlantic States-and in so doing, exhausted the list of those whom he knew to be intimate friends and admirers of Mr. King, when living, and whom he considered competent to the task.

All, for various reasons, declined to furnish the desired sketch. Having had only a casual introduction to Mr. King a few years before his death, and not having enjoyed any intimacy with him; and moreover, knowing nothing of his career prior to his arrival in California, the Editor felt his incapacity to treat the subject properly, and had nearly concluded that his work would have to be given to the public in an incomplete state, owing to the omission of a biographical notice of this truly representative man. But a short time before the manuscript was placed in the hands of the printer, he was presented with an address read a few days after the decease of Mr. King before the Unitarian Society, of which he was Pastor, by a prominent citizen of San Francisco, who had for several years been a warm personal friend of Mr. King, and who had received from his dying lips the injunction: "Keep my

memory green." This gentleman was then, as he had for some years previously been, a well known merchant, and also Superintendent of the United States Branch Mint of San Francisco. The description of the death scene of Mr. King, of which the author was an unhappy witness, is fraught with absorbing and melancholy interest.

This address, however, discloses no information concerning Mr. King's ancestry, birth, boyhood, or any portion of his career passed prior to his arrival in California, but the San Francisco Bulletin, on the day of Mr. King's death, contained an ably-written editorial, eulogistic of his splendid talents and his great services to the State. And the local columns of that journal gave a brief notice of his life, on the same day, and, a few days later, contained a full account of the solemn ceremonies and impressive scenes attending his burial.

These articles in the Bulletin newspaper, and the address alluded to, together make up a faithful and interesting history of Mr. King; and the Editor gives place to them here, in lieu of an original sketch, confident that they will be accepted by an appreciative public as a worthy memorial of his life and services.

From the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, March 4th, 1864.

THE ANNOUNCEMENT of the death of the REV. THOMAS STARR KING startles the community, and shocks it like the loss of a great battle or tidings of a sudden and undreamed-of public calamity. Certainly no other man on the Pacific Coast would be missed so much. San Francisco has lost one of her chief attractions; the State, its noblest orator; the country, one of her ablest defenders. Mr. King had been less than four years in California, yet in that short time he had done so much and so identified himself with its best interests, that scarcely one public institution or enterprise of philanthropy exists here which will not feel that it has lost a champion. He was a vast power which any struggling good work could command. The most erudite and the least cultivated were alike charmed by the eloquence of his popular addresses.

Some

He warmed the coldest audience into enthusiasm. said it was his musical voice; some that it was his genial manner; some that it was his tact in feeling his audience and humoring it until every fraction of it was "in sympathy" with him, when he boldly led off to the point he had in view; some, in more general terms, that it was his commanding genius; some that it was the merits of his cause, which it was his gift to lift up and present in its best light, that accounted for his sway over the multitude; but on this all agree, friends and opponents, that while the matter was in his hands there was no gainsaying him. Few public speakers were bold enough of choice to follow with a speech after he had spoken; and if he were announced, the audience was never satisfied till his turn

came.

Mr. King had grown immensely as a public speaker since he left the East. He brought with him a most enviable reputation as a literary lecturer, a polished, brilliant writer and preacher. Those who knew him congratulated California on his coming; they said he would do for our landscape and our land what he had done for New Hampshire; for his White Hills, their Legends, Landscapes and Poetry, had made the White Mountains classical, and brought them within the circle of all Eastern summer tourists. The most sanguine never imagined that he would become the power that he quickly proved himself at the sterner, harder duties that engage men who lay the foundations of States. He used to say, soon after he arrived here, and when he found how much greater would be his influence with this people if he could speak as well extempore as he wrote, that he would give anything if he had the ability to "think on his feet." "Beecher has it,' said he; "his thoughts come trooping in never so swiftly, so orderly, and in such force as while on his feet with a great audience before him-every upturned face is his ally in marshaling his grand thoughts; but I can't." Few men at the height of their fame venture the experiment of a new style of address. He ventured, and every one who has heard his later off-hand speeches will testify how speedily he acquired the faculty which he coveted-of

thinking on his feet-his best things flashing into his own mind apparently the instant that they flashed through it into his audience. Mr. King introduced himself to the San Francisco community by a course of lectures delivered one each week in the First Congregational Church, which was crowded to its utmost capacity to hear them. It is safe to say that fifteen minutes after he began the delivery of the first one, his position as an incomparable lecturer was established. That series had been delivered at the East. Each one of them was a perfect gem in its way. Not a sentence in one of them but gleamed with beauty. The rare and dainty imagination of the lecturer discovered itself in every phrase, and showed him a poet in the disguise of prose. The skeptical said it was very pretty writing certainly, but they doubted his depth. The lectures that Mr. King wrote here were of altogether a different order. He availed himself of that injunction of the rhetoricians, not to be too evenly excellent in your style. He polished his sentences less, he waited no longer on fine fancies; he argued more; he dropped down to good plain talk for minutes together in his addresses; and then, when his hearers were rested, he blazed out with passages that swept away all thoughts but of the one topic that possessed him.

THOMAS STARR KING was born in New York, December 16th, 1824. His father was a Universalist minister, settled in 1834 over a congregation in Charlestown, Mass. At the time of his father's death, Mr. King was preparing to enter Harvard College, but this event left the family in a manner dependent upon him for support, and from the age of twelve to twenty, he was employed either as a clerk or school teacher. All this while he was an ardent student; scarcely were the regular duties of the day done, than the interregnum found him at his desk; and midnight looked in upon him deep in books, theological studies claiming his attention mainly. Following the bent of his mind, he devoted himself to the ministry, preaching his first sermon in the town of Woburn, in September, 1845. He subsequently preached at Charlestown to the congregation of which his father had charge.

In 1848, at the age of twenty-four, he was called to preside over the Hollis street Unitarian Church, in Boston. The church at this time was very much divided, so much so that it was feared that harmony could not be restored. Under the ministry of the energetic young pastor, however, peace once more came to its councils; the church grew rapidly in strength; and when Mr. King left, it enjoyed a prosperity unprecedented in its history. The same genial and sympathetic manners which won him the affections of the whole people of this city, as well as of his immediate congregation, endeared him to the congregation of which he had charge in Boston; and when he announced to the latter his intention of changing his residence and making this coast the scene of his future labors, a storm of regrets and remonstrances arose which would have made a weaker man change his purpose. He received the call from the Unitarian Society of this city early in the year of 1860, and sailed from Boston in the month of April. In a letter to his Hollis street Church, informing them of the call to San Francisco, he gave two reasons for his acceptance of it. One was his failing health, which made a change of climate necessary; the other, and the principal one, a desire to do the will of his Master.

He identified himself at once with California and its people, urging their interests on all occasions with a zeal and persistence which could not have been exceeded had he been one of the first settlers of the country. He looked beyond the pulpit, and mingled much with mentouching life at nearly all points. The agricultural and mineral resources of our State claimed a large share of his attention, and his lectures, illustrated by quaint humor as well as by deep and practical knowledge of his texts, are fresh as the sound of words spoken yesterday in the ears of our people. His was one of those lovable natures, which warm to all men, and in consequence his circle of friends was only bounded by his acquaintance-it is questionable if he ever had an enemy among all who knew him, even those who differed from him in theological views yielding to the magnetic sway of his voice and