Said our beloved
preacher, our "Saint of the Pacific Coast," as he lay dying, "I see
a great future before me." Without that vision he would not have been
Starr King.

Part V. In Retrospect

Above that of all other men the fame of the orator is transient.
Eloquence may be "logic on fire" as Dr. Lyman Beecher defined it.
Oratory may be, as Emerson said, "the noblest expression of purely
personal energy." But it is so far personal, so allied to grace of
gesture, to charm of manner, to melody of voice, to perfection of
speech, to a commanding presence, that it carries to the future but a
fraction of its power. The cold type and the insentiate page constitute
at best only the record of nature's rarest gift.

Moreover oratory today is at its ebb, as it has been a hundred times
before, and with us the man of eloquence passes to quick oblivion. It
would be futile to deny that the common fate of orators has overtaken
Starr King. Even in California the present generation knows painfully
little of his great services to the State. This is the first serious
attempt, let us hope it will not be the last, accurately to measure the
extent and value of that service so nobly rendered. It is gratifying,
however, to recall that Californians of his own time, and the years
immediately following, paid ample tribute to his work and his memory.
Extraordinary honors, such as never have been given to any private
citizen, were freely and lovingly accorded the patriot-preacher.

On the evening of March 4, 1864, the day of King's death, the San
Francisco Bulletin, then, as now, one of the leading papers of the city,
contained the following tribute:

"The announcement of the death of Rev. Thomas Starr King startles the
community, and shocks it like the loss of a great battle or tidings of
a sudden and undreamed of public calamity. Certainly no other man on the
Pacific Coast would be missed so much. San Francisco has lost one of her
chief attractions; the State, its noblest orator; the country one of her
ablest defenders."

Scarcely forty years of age, a Californian only from 1860 to 1864, he
had in this brief period so won the hearts of men that in honor of
his funeral the legislature and all the courts adjourned, the national
authorities fired minute guns in the bay, while all the flags in the
city and on the ships hung at half-mast, including those of the foreign
consuls and those on the vessels of England, Russia, Hamburg, Columbia