So it is not a bad idea to study eccentric characters, especially if they are strangely good and oddly useful. One such, at least, we have at hand for the first study of this series—Rev. Edward T. Taylor, “Father Taylor,” “The Sailor-Preacher,” of Boston and the world. Born in Virginia, reared on the sea, and adopted by New England. Born a religionist, he preached “play” sermons when a child; born again a Christian, he preached the gospel in the Methodist Episcopal Church until all humanity claimed him. Born a poet, for ten years he studied nature in her tragic and her melting moods upon the sea; studied man in the forecastle, in the prison, upon the farm, in the market. Nature was his university; humanity his text-book; hard experience his tutor. At the age of twenty he had traveled the world over, had sounded the depths of human fortune, passion, misery, and sin; was profoundly learned in his great text-book, and the most inspired interpreter of its unuttered wants—and did not know the alphabet! He had become celebrated throughout New England as a marvelous prodigy in the despised sect of “shouting Methodists” years before he could read a text or “line” a hymn. And to the day of his death his preaching knew no method, his eloquence no logic, his conduct no consistency, and his power no limit or restraint. To this day no one has succeeded in analyzing his genius. He could not himself account for his power, nor could he control it. He seemed to play upon his audiences at will as a master plays upon the harp; yet some unseen, mysterious force played upon him in turn. His brethren in the ministry, who accounted for his strange power by attributing it to the Holy Spirit, were confounded by the rudeness, jocoseness, and at times almost profanity of his speech at its highest flights; and they who undertook to resolve his efforts into the accepted elements of human power were astounded by the more than human resources of a mind uncultured and a nature as wild, as uncontrollable, as bright and as sad as the sea he loved. Surely, if ever man was inspired, Father Taylor was.