lecturer. However much of elegant leisure the
more solid and instructive lecturers may have, Mr. King is always
wanted. He is, in some respects, the most popular writer and preacher of
the two denominations which he equally represents, being a sort of soft
ligament between the Chang of Universalism and the Eng of Unitarianism."

This last criticism invites us to notice--all too briefly--a phase of
King's experience in New England fitting him most admirably for the
larger work he was to do on the Pacific Coast. From 1840 to 1860 the
Lyceum flourished in the United States as never before or since. Large
numbers of lecture courses, extending even to the small cities and
towns, were liberally patronized and generously supported. In many
communities this was the one diversion and the one extravagance. To
fill the new demand an extraordinary group of public speakers appeared;
Emerson, Edward Everett, Wendell Phillips, Dr. Chapin, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, George William Curtis, Henry Ward Beecher, Frederick Douglas,
Theodore Parker and others, whose names are reverently spoken to this
day by aged men and women who remember the uplift given them in youth by
these giants of the platform.

That he was always wanted with such rivals as those is proof enough of
King's power with the people, of his fame as an orator, even before his
greater development and his more wonderful achievements in California.
His lecture circuit extended from Boston to Chicago. His principal
subjects were "Goethe," "Socrates," "Substance and Show," a lecture
which ranks next to Wendell Phillips' "Lost Arts" in popularity. Not
withstanding the academic titles King gave his lectures they seemed to
have been popular with all classes. "Grand, inspiring, instructive,
lectures," said the learned. "Thems' idees," said unlettered men of
sound sense. It was thought to be a remarkable triumph of platform
eloquence that King could make such themes fascinating to Massachusetts
farmers and Cape Cod fishermen. In fine phrase it was said of him that
he lectured upon such themes as Plato and Socrates "with a prematureness
of scholarship, a delicacy of discernment, a sweet innocent combination
of confidence and diffidence, which were inexpressibly charming."

It may be claimed with all candor that few public teachers have ever
been able so to enlist scientific truth in the service of the spirit.
That spirit and life are the great realities, that all else is mainly
show, at