The labors of the devoted preacher and author increased year after year. Impressed more than ever with the monotonous life of the English laborer and his hard-worked wife, Kingsley started Penny Readings for the people, and village concerts, in which friends from London helped. He attended the national science meetings; he preached in Westminster Abbey; he brought out a series of papers for children on natural science, called "Madam How and Lady Why;" he read sixteen volumes of Comte's works in preparation for his Cambridge lectures--he had already given a course on the History of America. In 1869 he was appointed Canon of Chester. Here he started a class in botany,--a walk and a field lecture were enjoyed once a week by a hundred or more persons,--which has resulted in the Chester Natural History Society, with about six hundred members. He also gave many geological lectures. "The Soil of the Field," "The Pebbles in the Street," "The Stones in the Wall," "The Coal in the Fire," "The Lime in the Mortar," "The Slates on the Roof," were published in a book called "Town Geology." How broadened would be the minds of many in our congregations, especially the minds of our young men and women, if more of our ministers would teach the wonders of the world in which we live! Kingsley was made President of the Education Section of the Social Science Congress at Bristol, and one hundred thousand copies of his valuable inaugural address were distributed. At this Congress he met Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell from America, and she became a welcome guest at Eversley. He was an ardent advocate of medical education for women. He wrote to John Stuart Mill that his "Subjection of Woman" seemed to him "unanswerable and exhaustive, and certain, from its moderation as well as from its boldness, to do good service in this good cause." ... After a journey with his daughter to the West Indies, from which came his book, "At Last," he returned to his multifarious duties. As President of the Midland Institute at Birmingham, he spoke on the Science of Health. As a result, a manufacturer gave £2,500 to found classes and lectures on Human Physiology and the Science of Health, believing that physical improvement would be followed by mental and moral improvement. In the spring of 1873 Mr. Gladstone, with the sanction of the Queen, asked Kingsley to become Canon of Westminster. His aged mother, now eighty-six, who had made her home at Eversley since the death of her husband, lived long enough to rejoice in his appointment to the Abbey, and died April 16. The Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed him heartily. "It is a great sphere," he wrote, "for a man who, like you, knows how to use it." But those who knew him best had grave fears that he would not long fill the place. He was urged to make a sea voyage, and with his daughter Rose started for America in January, 1874, taking with him a few lectures, to meet his expenses.