seventy years lived about five minutes and that was when he first fell
in love.'"

Writing of his lecture work in California which he called "detestable
vagrancy," he says:

"There is a great flood in the interior. California is a lake. Rats,
squirrels, locusts, lecturers, and other like pests are drowned out. I
am a home bird, and enjoy it hugely."

King greeted the mention of his name as candidate for United States
Senator with the statement, "I would swim to Australia before taking a
political post," and added, "a dandy lives from one necktie to another,
a fashionable woman from one wrinkle to another and a politician from
one election to another."

Certainly there is a smile, as well as a truth, in the following:

"Our popular definition of a ghost is just the reverse of truth; it
makes one consist of a soul without a body, while really a specter, an
illusion, a humbug of the eyesight and the touch, is a human body not
vitalized through and through with a soul."

"King was the best story teller of his time," thought Dr. Bellows.
"Gifted with an exquisite, a delicious sense of the ludicrous, and
given to bursts of uncontrollable merriment, happy as childhood and as
innocent," this is the verdict of one of his earliest biographers,--E.
P. Whipple. That sunny mirth and infectious laughter was no mean element
of his power over the people, we can readily believe.

Another explanation of his far reaching influence both in the pulpit
and on the platform, is found in the rare skill with which he made the
discoveries of science, and the beauties of nature, serve his need as
a teacher of morals and religion. And here, again, he was helped by the
spirit of his age. Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published in 1859, a
kind of crown and culmination of a half century of brilliant progress in
science. Starr King but shared the temper of his time as he turned with
delight to the writings of the masters and reveled in the new universe
there revealed. Modern science, which troubled the faith of many, only
deepened and strengthened his own, as he idealized and spiritualized
each new wonder of earth and heaven. The comet of July, 1861, gave
noble opportunity to enforce in his pulpit the religious lessons of that
mother of all the sciences, Astronomy. "I am glad," he began, "at every
new temptation to consider in the pulpit and the Church the wonders and
laws of modern astronomy."

"Does it ever occur to you, brethren, how we