to school, and
mother and son faced the world from the vantage-ground of success. Starr
had quit the drygoods trade and gone to teaching school on less salary,
so as to get more leisure for study.

Incidentally he kept books at the Navy Yard.

About this time Theodore Parker wrote to a friend in Maiden: "I can not
come to preach for you as I would like, but with your permission I will
send Thomas Starr King. This young man is not a regularly ordained
preacher, but he has the grace of God in his heart, and the gift of
tongues. He is a rare, sweet spirit, and I know that after you have met
him you will thank me for sending him to you."

Then soon we hear of Starr King's being invited to Medford to give a
Fourth of July oration, and also of his speaking in the Universalist
churches at Cambridge, Waltham, Watertown, Hingham and Salem--sent to
these places by Doctor E. H. Chapin, pastor of the Charlestown
Universalist Church, and successor to the Reverend Thomas F. King,
father of Starr King.

Starr seems to have served as a sort of assistant to Chapin, and thereby
revealed his talent and won the heart of the great man. Edwin Hubbell
Chapin was only ten years older than Starr King, and at that time had
not really discovered himself, but in discovering another he found
himself. Twenty years later Beecher and Chapin were to rival each other
for first place as America's greatest pulpit orator. These men were
always fast friends, yet when they met at convention or conference folks
came for miles to see the fire fly. "Where are you going?" once asked
Beecher of Chapin when they met by chance on Broadway. "Where am I
going?" repeated Chapin. "Why, if you are right in what you preach, you
know where I am going." But only a few years were to pass before Chapin
said in public in Beecher's presence, "I am jealous of Mr. Beecher--he
preaches a better Universalist sermon than I can." Chapin made his mark
upon the time: his sermons read as though they were written yesterday,
and carry with them a deal of the swing and onward sweep that are
usually lost when the orator attempts to write. But if Chapin had done
nothing else but discover Starr King, the drygoods-clerk, rescue him
from the clutch of commerce and back him on the orator's platform, he
deserves the gratitude of generations. And all this I say as a
businessman who fully recognizes that commerce is just as honorable and
a deal more necessary than oratory. But there were other