He was the only speaker I ever knew who could talk himself into ideas. Many, by dint of talking, can work themselves into an implicit faith in doctrines they were indifferent about at starting; but this man had the dangerous gift of being able, not merely to think on his feet, but to set his faculties in motion by the action of his tongue. Again and again he has gone to a public meeting, at which he was expected to speak, with no preparation at all, or none but a very general one, depending upon some impulse of the moment to set him a-going. A word dropped by a previous speaker, the mere presence of the audience, a suggestion awakened in his mind as he sat awaiting his turn, would excite him sufficiently; and when he stood up one idea started another, an illustration opened a new field of thought, till the torrent, growing deeper and more tumultuous as it flowed, carried the hearers away in ecstasy. One who did not know him found it hard to believe that he had not meditated his address beforehand. He has gone into the pulpit with a written sermon, and being struck by a sentence in the Scripture he was reading, has laid his manuscript aside and delivered an extemporaneous discourse on an entirely different theme. The reason why he did not preach habitually without notes was that this fatal facility of speech excited him too much, carried him too far, rendered him discursive, led him on to inordinate length, and wearied his congregation. He needed the restraint of the paper, the calm dignity of the closet meditation; he needed also to spread his thoughts over a larger expanse of time, and thus to secure quiet for his brain. At the risk, therefore, of being dull, he spared himself, as well as his parishioners, the stimulating fervor of the extemporaneous address. He may have felt, too, that his was not the quality of mind for this method. It required a less fluent talent, a less ready loquacity, a less mercurial temperament, a more reserved habit. There are those whose constitutional reticence preserves them from aberration; who can see the end from the beginning; can cling closely to the matter in hand; can walk a thin plank; and have too few ready ideas to be in any peril of going astray. Such are the most successful extemporaneous preachers. Dr. Bellows' genius was better adapted to an address, therefore, than to a sermon.