I find to-day that I must give up the hope of meeting you on your arrival in San Francisco. It makes me feel rather more keenly than I am wont, the hardship of my present circumstances. It is useless to say anything of that, however.

I think you will be disappointed with California in many respects. I don’t think crudity and paroxysmal sproutings of civilization are much more congenial to a man of your training and habits than they are consistent with the demands of my imagination and conscience, although I am born a pioneer-worker and you, a leader of the van. I wish I could do something towards making your paths smooth in California but I am posted where, for the present, at least, this seems to be impossible.

If there seems to be something of misgiving in what I have said above, it applies only to a consideration of your personal comfort and the difficulties of the task before you. I don’t doubt that you will overcome them and that it will be the highest satisfaction of your life to have done so. I congratulate you, therefore, with the largest signifigance on having come to California. What you will do is to clinch the hold of King’s influence in the training of communal civilization in the various vague centers where it has a nebulous tendency to thicken; to establish, strengthen, and to make more deep and permanent, the political Faith which the magnitude of his faith and the inspiration of his eloquence caused to spring out of the dead rock of political infidelity, commercial subserviency and social pococuranteism; thirdly and especially, (because the way to it can be more clearly seen and followed by prearranged steps) what you call the building of liberal Christianity, and, fourthly, keeping up the contributions of a parched and somewhat desolated land to the Sanitary Commission, when the prime lever by which those contributions have hitherto been obtained, in seasons of ordinary prosperity, has been removed.

As to the first, you will get no idea, as a mere traveller, least of all will you do so while living in San Francisco, which to all external appearance is an ordinary Western large town taken up and thrown down on the Pacific Shore a little the worse and a little more disjointed, perhaps, for the jar—of the absolutely superficial, unrooted and veneered character of all that you see of all that which looks like civilization (in its radical sense) in California. To really see something of this, however, consider what is at the bottom of all real civilized communal life; then take the first hundred men and women whom you meet even in San Francisco, [227]

Thomas Starr King

As to the other points, I know very little compared with what you will be able to learn from the friends who have already welcomed you. I will only say one word of caution derived from my personal observation and experience. There is a very large body of people in the State with whom King’s name has not the talismanic influence which you might be apt to suppose and of which you will probably be assured. Its power is indeed most wonderful and in every assemblage of the people there will be enough of those who have yielded themselves wholly captive to his [228]eloquence and are really his disciples, to give an appearance of great reverence for his memory, of respect for his religious principles, and of enthusiastic devotion in his political faith. Yet between the bigots and the traitors I believe a majority of the people of the State secretly or openly hate and detest his memory and will do and are doing their best to prevent the continued living of his influence. Take this for a fact whatever you are told and whatever appearances of unanimity and respect you may meet with. Underneath all, the fact is as I tell you, and it will be the part of wisdom to always have it in view and to be adroitly contending with it. That a large part of those who are not ready to receive what you have to give them with open hearts are half ashamed to avow the spirit I have referred to, which exists in them, that many more are wholly so, is the great circumstance of the situation. King presented the works of his faith to them in such an altogether lovely, and in such an uncombative form, that they dare not avow themselves (even to themselves) to be believers, after the way in which they were educated, in its tendency and relationship to infidelity and wickedness. I don’t think that such an opportunity for recommending and establishing a willingness to give fair play to liberalism in the intellectual part of Christianity has ever occurred, at least on this Continent, as you will have here just at this time. I am glad to believe that it is your disposition as I am sure it will be your truest policy to sink every other distinct doctrine you and your friends may hold except that of individual intellectual freedom in Christ’s church, and to present this by the persuasion of its association, in your own mind, as it was associated in that of King, with other good and lovely things.

Therefore as I said I congratulate you with signifigance.

As to myself, personally, I am sadly damaged. I have not been able to write for some time at all except as you see here: this is the first friendly letter I have indited, even in this way, for several weeks. If you see Dr. Ayres in San Francisco he can tell you, if you wish, what is the matter at the bottom of all. I am living with great comfort now with my family about me. As soon as you are able to lay any outlines at all of your campaign-plan, I want you to let me know them so that I can propose to you how my connection with them may be spliced in. I am afraid you cannot visit the Yo-Semite till very late. I don’t think that the question of season is of nearly as much consequence as it is generally supposed to be; the water is a trifling incident; you might hasten your journey a little, as you would to reach St. Peter’s on the illumination night, but St Peter’s is St Peter’s without the illumination and when you dry up the water Yo-Semite will remain.

Of course I expect a visit from you here, at my house and that you will make it a Sunday, that is a holiday of rest in the campaign, you [229]must have some Sundays and your masters must know that you must and must let you have them in your own way. Then we must go to the Yo Semite together; very slowly, for you must have time for contemplation and absorption, and I haven’t strength for any other than very easy travelling. I shall have everything here you will want for the journey. I need not say the sooner, consistently with your engagements, the better. It is a pleasant country here now. In a month it will be a dreary waste. It is hot here now, in a month it will be fiery. Do you know that there is no part of the world within the tropics subject to be as intensely heated, as this? It is so. They know nothing about it in San Francisco, but be you warned, it is so, and the fact should be regarded in your planning. In San Francisco, you can work as hard in July & August as ever. In the interior one day in April is worth ten in July. But Yo Semite, and the road there from here, is in the mountains and above the heat & the drought.

I have not been able to ascertain who comes with you, but I hope you are not alone.