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Had Starr King consented to remain in Boston he might have held his charge against the ravages of time, secreted a curate, taken on a becoming buffer of adipose, and glided off by imperceptible degrees on to the Superannuated List.

But early in that historic month of April, Eighteen Hundred Sixty-one, he set sail for California, having accepted a call from the First Unitarian Church of San Francisco. This was his first trip to the Pacific Coast, but New England people had preceded him, and not being able to return, they wanted Boston to come to them. The journey was made by the way of Panama, without any special event. The pilot who met the ship outside of Golden Gate bore them the first news that Sumter had been fired upon, and the bombardment was at the time when the ship that bore Starr King was only a few miles from South Carolina’s coast.

With prophetic vision Starr King saw the struggle that was to come, and the words of Webster, uttered many years before, rushed to his lips:

“When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased nor polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as ‘What is all this worth?’ nor those other words of delusion and folly, ‘Liberty first and Union afterwards’; but everywhere, spread over all in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart–Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”

The landing was made on Saturday, and the following day Starr King spoke for the first time in California. An hour before the service was to begin, the church was wedged tight. The preacher had much difficulty in making his way through the dense mass of humanity to reach the pulpit. “Is that the man?” went up the smothered exclamation, as Starr King reached the platform and faced his audience. His slight, slender figure and boyish face were plainly a disappointment, but this was not to last. The preacher had prepared a sermon–such a sermon as he had given many times to well-dressed, orderly and cultured Boston.

And if this California audience was surprised, the speaker also was no less. The men to women were as seven to one. He saw before him a sea of bronzed and bearded faces, earnest, attentive and hungry for truth. There were occasional marks of dissipation and the riot of the senses, softened by excess into penitence–whipped out and homesick. Here were miners in red-flannel shirts, sailors, soldiers in uniform and soldiers of fortune. The preacher looked at the motley mass in a vain attempt to pick out his old friends from New England. The genteel, slightly blase quality of culture that leans back in its cushioned pew and courteously waits to be instructed, was not there. These people did not lean back: they leaned forward, and with parted lips they listened for every word. There was no choir, and when “an old familiar hymn” was lined off by a volunteer who knew his business, that great audience arose and sang as though it would shake the rafters of heaven.

Those who go down to the sea in ships, sing; shepherds who tend their flocks by night, sing; men in the forest or those who follow the trackless plains, sing. Congregational singing is most popular among those who live far apart–to get together and sing is a solace. Loneliness, separation and heart-hunger all drive men into song.