men to sell
thread and calico, and God had special work for Thomas Starr King.

Chapin was a graduate of Bennington Seminary, the school that also
graduated the father of Robert Ingersoll. On Chapin's request Theodore
Parker, himself a Harvard man, sent Starr King over to Cambridge to
preach. Boston was a college town--filled with college traditions, and
when one thinks of sending out this untaught stripling to address
college men, we can not but admire the temerity of both Chapin and
Parker. "He has never attended a Divinity School," writes Chapin to
Deacon Obadiah B. Queer of Quincy, "but he is educated just the same. He
speaks Greek, Hebrew, French, German, and fairly good English, as you
will see. He knows natural history and he knows humanity; and if one
knows man and Nature, he comes pretty close to knowing God."

Where did this drygoods-clerk get his education? Ah, I'll tell you--he
got his education as the lion's whelp gets his. The lioness does not
send her cub away to a lioness that has no cubs in order that he may be
taught. The lion nature gets what it needs with its mother's milk and by
doing.

Schools and colleges are cumbrous makeshifts, often forcing truth on
pupils out of season, and thus making lessons grievous. "The soul knows
all things," says Emerson, "and knowledge is only a remembering." "When
the time is ripe, men know," wrote Hegel. At the last we can not teach
anything--nothing is imparted. We can not make the plants and flowers
grow--all we can do is to supply the conditions, and God does the rest.
In education we can only supply the conditions for growth--we can not
impart, nor force the germs to unfold.

Starr King's mother was his teacher. Together they read good books, and
discussed great themes. She read for him and he studied for her. She did
not treat him as a child--things that interested her she told to him.
The sunshine of her soul was reflected upon his, and thus did he grow. I
know a woman whose children will be learned, even though they never
enter a schoolroom. This woman is a companion to her children and her
mind vitalizes theirs. This does not mean that we should at once do away
with schools and colleges, but it does reveal the possible. To read and
then discuss with a strong and sympathetic intellect what you read is to
make the thought your own--it is a form of exercise that brings growth.

Starr King's mother was not a wonderful nor a famous person--I find no
mention