"The most potent factor in effecting that determination," to establish this beyond the possibility of cavil or denial, we have told here once again his inspiring story. The fact that as late as 1913, the Legislature of California appropriated $10,000 to place a bust of Starr King in our National Capitol at Washington would seem to indicate that the people have resolved that this man shall go down to latest generations as par excellence,—"our hero."
It would be natural, and entirely proper, to close by recounting the numerous tributes that in the years since King's death have been paid to his memory, in magazines, memoirs, speeches and poems, but it would seem like sweetness too long drawn out. And, perhaps, few could resist the feeling that no human being ever really deserved such "largeness of love." But they seem so real, they ring so true, that the conviction grows almost to a certainty that here was one who drew men to him by the incarnate sweetness and nobility of his nature. "Doubtless," writes his friend, and co-worker in the Sanitary Commission, Dr. Henry W. Bellows, "he had his own consciousness of imperfection and sin—for he was human, but I have yet to know and yet to hear the first suggestion of what his faults and errors were."
In no spirit of fulsome adulation did a prominent San Franciscan write, on the Sunday following King's departure to "what lies beyond," these tender words, "Bells sadly ringing this Sabbath morning remind me that one pulpit stands empty; and that it must stand empty, to all intents and purposes, until the church walls crumble, and pulpit, pillars, and all are resolved into dust."
Another prominent resident of the State, writing a half century later,—seeing all after the sobering lapse of years, writing as though the cloud of sorrow for his friend had never been lifted, thus pays his sincere tribute of respect:
"And so, in the prime of life, at the zenith of his achievement, before its noon, this sweet, great soul passed away, leaving to those who loved him, dust and anguish. Well do we remember that almost at his death a minor earthquake shook the city, and men said, 'Even the earth shudders at the thought that Starr King is dead.'"
Of the many poetical tributes, two at least, are of permanent significance. One by his friend Bret Harte, dear companion of those great years in San Francisco, on "A Pen of Thomas Starr King," is at once so penetrating and so just that it well deserves here a place:
"This is the reed the dead musician dropped,
With tuneful magic in its sheath still hidden;
The prompt allegro of its music stopped,
Its melodies unbidden.
But who shall finish the unfinished strain,
Or wake the instrument to awe and wonder,
And bid the slender barrel breathe again,
An organ-pipe of thunder!
His pen! what humbler memories cling about
Its golden curves! what shapes and laughing graces
Slipped from its point, when his full heart went out
In smiles and courtly phrases.
The truth, half jesting, half in earnest flung;
The word of cheer, with recognition in it;
The note of alms, whose golden speech outrung
The golden gift within it.
But all in vain the enchanter's wand we wave:
No stroke of ours recalls his magic vision:
The incantation that its power gave
Sleeps with the dead magician."
Could Starr King have been given the privilege of selecting his poet-laureate we may be sure he would have named Whittier. For they were both lovers of nature and of man. Both earnest abolitionists, intensely patriotic, loving liberty and the rights of the humblest of God's creatures, they were kindred spirits. So Whittier wrote not alone for New England, not alone for East and West, but from the deeps of his own loyal and gentle soul, as he penned, these beautiful lines:
"The great work laid upon his two-score years
It's done, and well done. If we drop our tears,
Who loved him as few men were ever loved,
We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan
With him whose life stands rounded and approved
In the full growth and stature of a man.
Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope,
With your deep toll a sound of faith and hope!
Wave cheerily still, O banner, halfway down,
From thousand-masted bay and steepled town!
Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell
Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell
That the brave sower saw his ripened grain.
O East and West! O morn and sunset twain
No more forever!—has he lived in vain
Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one and told
Your bridal service from his lips of gold."
Whittier refuses to believe that King's life, though he lived but "two score years" was a "broken plan." All who believe that life is of divine ordering, our days, our duty, our destiny to the last hour will, with resignation, accept this teaching of faith. To others it will seem in the nature of an irreparable loss that one so good, and so greatly useful, should have died so young.