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 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