best but the changing vesture of spirit, is set forth in King's
lectures so completely that he may be said to have made, even at this
early age, a genuine and lasting contribution to the thought of his
time. All this be it noted before he had set foot upon the Pacific
Coast, where he was destined to do his real work.

One other service King had rendered the country, and especially New
England, should here be gratefully recalled. Always in delicate health,
he had formed the habit of spending his vacations in the White Hills
of New Hampshire. Benefited in mind and body, and charmed by the rare
beauty of a region then unknown, he endeavored to reveal to the people
of Boston, and other Eastern cities, the neglected loveliness lying at
their very doors. The result was King's "The White Hills, Their Legends,
Landscape and Poetry." Although this pioneer nature-book is now probably
quite forgotten, even by the multitudes who visit the scenes it so
glowingly describes, it is well to remember that it was, indeed, one
of the first attempts to entice the city dweller "back to nature."
Published in 1859, it followed Thoreau's at that time unread "Walden"
by only five years, while it preceded Murray's "Adventures in the
Wilderness," and the earliest of John Burroughs' delightful volumes,
by a full generation. It was in every way a commendable, if not great,
adventure in authorship.

From this brief review it is evident that when Starr King preached his
last sermon in Boston, March 25, 1860, he had made for himself an
enviable reputation in three difficult fields of work, as preacher,
lecturer and writer. The feeling of Boston and New England upon his
departure was fittingly expressed by Edwin Percy Whipple in a leading
journal of the day in which this eminent author "appealed to thousands
in proof of the assertion that though in charge of a large parish, and
with a lecture parish which extended from Bangor to St. Louis, he still
seemed to have time for every noble work, to be open to every demand of
misfortune, tender to every pretension of weakness, responsive to every
call of sympathy, and true to every obligation of friendship; all will
indulge the hope that California, cordial as must be the welcome
she extends him, will still not be able to keep him long from
Massachusetts."

On the day before he sailed from New York a "Breakfast Reception" was
given him at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, at which three hundred guests were
seated a