Article June 6, 1901 Issue

Charles Kingsley's Love for God's Creatures

Baptist Standard

Charles Kingsley's love for all God's creatures was remarkable. He spoke of them as his friends. On his lawn dwelt a family of natter jacks (running toads), who lived on from year to year in the same hole in the green bank, which the scythe was never allowed to approach. He had two little friends in a pair of sand wasps, which lived in a crack of the window in his dressing-room, one of which he had saved from drowning in a hand-basin, taking it tenderly out into the sunshine to dry; and every spring he would look out eagerly for them or their children, who came out of or returned to the same crack. The little flycatcher, who built its nest every year under his bedroom window, was a constant joy to him. He had also a favorite slowworm in the church-yard, which his parishioners were warned not to kill, the mistaken idea being prevalent in Eversley that slowworms were poisonous. All these tastes he encouraged in his children, teaching them to love and handle gently without disgust all living things, toads, frogs, beetles, as works and wonders from the hand of a living God.

His guests were surprised one morning at breakfast when his little girl ran up to the open window of the dinning-room holding a long, repulsive-looking worm in her hand, "Oh, daddy, look at this delightful worm!"

Baptist Standard.

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