California -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865; King, Thomas Starr, 1824-1864; Unitarians -- Biography
Brilliant as was the record of King as the champion of the Sanitary
Commission in California it was by no means the beginning and end of
his philanthropic labors. The forlorn condition of the Chinese--as men
without rights of citizenship--stirred his sympathy and he made earnest
effort to secure for them such civic rights as belong to industry. The
cause of labor, seldom thought in those days to come within the scope
of a minister's interest or duty, commanded his eager attention, and
he improved every opportunity to declare his reverence for the world's
workers in earth, and stone, and iron. In a fine passage in a lecture on
"The Earth and the Mechanic Arts," he writes:
"If we were to choose from the whole planet a score of men to represent
us on some other globe or in some other system in a great human fair of
the universe, it would not be kings, dukes, prime-ministers, the richest
men, we should appoint as ambassadors to show what our race is, and
what it is doing here, but the great thinkers, artists, and workers, the
thinkers in ink, the thinkers in stone and color, the thinkers in force
and homely matter, the men who are bringing the globe up towards the
Creator's imagination and purpose; and on this mission the leaders of
mechanic art would go side by side with Shakespeare and Milton, Angelo
and Wren, Newton and Cuvier.
"In England, now, they are preparing statues of Brunel the engineer, and
the Stephensons, father and son, to be finished and erected about the
same time with those of Macaulay and Havelock. The nation is beginning
to bow to the occupations and the genius that have added to her power
ten thousand fold,--is beginning to bow to labor, noble, glorious,
sacred labor."
Not alone in public pleas for unpopular causes but in private charity
King seemed tireless. "He had the rare facility in everything he said
and did of communicating himself; the most precious thing he could
bestow." We are told that a multitude in distress came to this
overburdened man. Ringing his doorbell they found entrance, and always
as they came back, the "step was quicker which was slow before, the head
was up which was down before, and the lips wreathed in smiles that were
sad before."
Thus we can see that it was not solely his eloquent defense of liberty
and justice which caused a San Francisco journal, reporting his funeral,
to say, "Perhaps more deeply beloved by a vast number of our people than
any other who has lived and toiled and died among us." His good deeds
made him worthy of this, one of the most beautiful eulogies ever given
mortal man, "No heart ever ached because of him until he died." This
was Starr King the philanthropist, a friend to all who needed his
friendship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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