Starr King's mother was his teacher. Together they read good books, and discussed great themes. She read for him and he studied for her. She did not treat him as a child—things that interested her she told to him. The sunshine of her soul was reflected upon his, and thus did he grow. I know a woman whose children will be learned, even though they never enter a schoolroom. This woman is a companion to her children and her mind vitalizes theirs. This does not mean that we should at once do away with schools and colleges, but it does reveal the possible. To read and then discuss with a strong and sympathetic intellect what you read is to make the thought your own—it is a form of exercise that brings growth.
Starr King's mother was not a wonderful nor a famous person—I find no mention of her in Society's Doings of the day—nothing of her dress or equipage. If she was "superbly gowned," we do not know it; if she was ever one of the "unbonneted," history is silent. All we know is, that together they read Bulfinch's "Mythology," Grote's "History of Greece," Plutarch, Dante and Shakespeare. We know that she placed a light in the window for him to make his home-coming cheerful, that together they sipped their midnight tea, that together they laughed, and sometimes wept—but not for long.
In Eighteen Hundred Forty-six Chapin was thirty-two years old. Starr King was twenty-two. A call had reached Chapin to come up higher; but he refused to leave the old church at Charlestown unless Starr King was to succeed him. To place a young man in the position of pastor where he has sat in the pews, his feet not reaching the floor, is most trying. Starr King knew every individual man, woman and child in the church, and they had known him since babyhood. In appearance he was but a boy, and the dignity that is supposed to send conviction home was entirely wanting.
But Chapin had his way and the boy was duly ordained and installed as pastor of the First Universalist Church of Charlestown.
The new pastor fully expected his congregation to give him "absent treatment," but instead, the audience grew—folks even came over from Boston to hear the boy-preacher. His sermons were carefully written, and dealt in the simple, every-day lessons of life. To Starr King this world is paradise enow; it's the best place of which we know, and the way for man to help himself is to try and make it a better place. There is a flavor of Theodore Parker in those early sermons, a trace of Thoreau and much tincture of Emerson—and all this was to the credit of the boy-preacher. His woman's mind absorbed things.
About that time Boston was in very fact the intellectual hub of America. Emerson was forty-three, his "Nature" had been published anonymously, and although it took eight years to sell this edition of five hundred copies, the author was in demand as a lecturer, and in some places society conceded him respectable. Wendell Phillips was addressing audiences that alternately applauded and jeered. Thoreau had discovered the Merrimac and explored Walden Woods; little Doctor Holmes was peregrinating in his One-Hoss Shay, vouchsafing the confidences of his boarding-house; Lowell was beginning to violate the rules of rhetoric; Whittier was making his plea for the runaway slave; and throughout New England the Lecture Lyceum was feeling its way.
A lecture course was then no vaudeville—five concerts and two lectures to take off the curse—not that! The speakers supplied strong meat for men. The stars in the lyceum sky were Emerson, Chapin, Beecher, Holmes, Bartol, Phillips, Ballou, Everett and Lowell. These men made the New England Lyceum a vast pulpit of free speech and advanced thought. And to a degree the Lyceum made these men what they were. They influenced the times and were influenced by the times. They were in competition with each other. A pace had been set, a record made, and the audiences that gathered expected much. An audience gets just what it deserves and no more. If you have listened to a poor speech, blame yourself.
In the life of George Francis Train, he tells that in Eighteen Hundred Forty Emerson spoke in Waltham for five dollars and four quarts of oats for his horse—now he received twenty-five dollars. Chapin got the same, and when the Committee could not afford this, he referred them to Starr King, who would lecture for five dollars and supply his own horse-feed.
Two years went by and calls came for Starr King to come up higher. Worcester would double his salary if he would take a year's course at the Harvard Divinity School. Starr showed the letter to Chapin, and both laughed. Worcester was satisfied with Starr King as he was, but what would Springfield say if they called a man who had no theological training? And then it was that Chapin said, "Divinity is not taught in the Harvard Divinity School," which sounds like a paraphrase of Ernest Renan's, "You will find God anywhere but in a theological seminary."