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Starr King
by
I know a man who was in a railroad wreck–the sleeping-car in which he rode left the track and rolled down an embankment. There was a black interval of horror, and then this man found himself, clad in his underclothes, standing on the upturned car, looking up at the Pleiades and this thought in his mind, “What beauty and peace are in these winter heavens!” The calamity had come–he was absolutely untouched–he was locating the constellations and surprised and happy in his ability to enjoy them.
Starr King and his mother sipped their midnight tea and grew jolly over the thought of their comfortable home; they were clothed and fed, the children well and sleeping soundly in baby abandon upstairs, the debts were being paid. They laughed, did this mother and son, really laughed aloud, when only a month before they had thought that only gloom and misery could ever again be theirs.
They laughed!
And soon the young man’s salary was increased–people liked to trade with him–customers came and asked that he might wait on them. He sold more goods than anyone else in his department, and yet he never talked things on to people. He was alert, affable, kindly, and anticipated the wishes and wants of his customers without being subservient, fawning or domineering.
This kind of helper is needed everywhere–the one who gives a willing hand, who puts soul into his service, who brings a glow of good-cheer into all his relations with men.
The doing things with a hearty enthusiasm is often what makes the doer a marked person and his deeds effective. The most ordinary service is dignified when it is performed in that spirit. Every employer wants those who work for him to put heart and mind into the toil. He soon picks out those whose souls are in their service, and gives them evidence of his appreciation. They do not need constant watching. He can trust them in his absence, and so the places of honor and profit naturally gravitate to them.
The years went by, and one fine day Starr King was twenty years of age. All of the debts were paid, the children were going to school, and mother and son faced the world from the vantage-ground of success. Starr had quit the drygoods trade and gone to teaching school on less salary, so as to get more leisure for study.
Incidentally he kept books at the Navy Yard.
About this time Theodore Parker wrote to a friend in Maiden: “I can not come to preach for you as I would like, but with your permission I will send Thomas Starr King. This young man is not a regularly ordained preacher, but he has the grace of God in his heart, and the gift of tongues. He is a rare, sweet spirit, and I know that after you have met him you will thank me for sending him to you.”
Then soon we hear of Starr King’s being invited to Medford to give a Fourth of July oration, and also of his speaking in the Universalist churches at Cambridge, Waltham, Watertown, Hingham and Salem–sent to these places by Doctor E. H. Chapin, pastor of the Charlestown Universalist Church, and successor to the Reverend Thomas F. King, father of Starr King.
Starr seems to have served as a sort of assistant to Chapin, and thereby revealed his talent and won the heart of the great man. Edwin Hubbell Chapin was only ten years older than Starr King, and at that time had not really discovered himself, but in discovering another he found himself. Twenty years later Beecher and Chapin were to rival each other for first place as America’s greatest pulpit orator. These men were always fast friends, yet when they met at convention or conference folks came for miles to see the fire fly. “Where are you going?” once asked Beecher of Chapin when they met by chance on Broadway. “Where am I going?” repeated Chapin. “Why, if you are right in what you preach, you know where I am going.” But only a few years were to pass before Chapin said in public in Beecher’s presence, “I am jealous of Mr. Beecher–he preaches a better Universalist sermon than I can.” Chapin made his mark upon the time: his sermons read as though they were written yesterday, and carry with them a deal of the swing and onward sweep that are usually lost when the orator attempts to write. But if Chapin had done nothing else but discover Starr King, the drygoods-clerk, rescue him from the clutch of commerce and back him on the orator’s platform, he deserves the gratitude of generations. And all this I say as a businessman who fully recognizes that commerce is just as honorable and a deal more necessary than oratory. But there were other men to sell thread and calico, and God had special work for Thomas Starr King.