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Notable speeches by notable speakers of the greater West
Notable speeches by notable speakers of the greater West Author:Harr Wagner Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THOMAS STARR KING. Thomas Starr King was born in New York in 1824, and died in San Francisco in 1863. His noted lectures on "Goethe" and "Substance and Shadow... more »" gave him national fame, but his greatest reputation as an orator was made during the years of 1860, 1861, and 1863, in California. In the Presidential election of 1860,he spoke on "Webster and the Constitution" and on "Washington and the Union," and swept everything before him by his magnificent eloquence. HIGH SCHOOL DEDICATION SPEECH. [Delivered September 19, 1860, at the dedication of the High School Building, Powell Street, San Francisco.l This audience, representing the mothers and fathers, the official forces and the rising life of this young, strange city, are to be congratulated on the event and occasion that calls us together. We welcome you to the service here with pride and joy. The corner-stone of any important representative edifice is laid with elaborate ceremonial. It is well to foster public interest in such forms. And it seems to me that it would be as fitting to recognize with public rejoicing the completion of a noble building, the moment when the workmen lay the last stone of the turret, the apex of the spire, the final tile on the dome. It was when the corner-stone of the earth was laid, that "the morning stars sang together,and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Can we believe—though we have no record or hint of the halleluiahs — that there was less jubilance amongst the holy hosts when " the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them," and " God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good"? We are here to rejoice in this completed work. There is very little in the building itself, though it is commodious and cheerful, to awaken any enthusiasm....« less