at times from four o'clock in the morning until twelve
at night when work pressed and time was short.

His life of Bayard Taylor was also written quickly. He had traveled
with Taylor through Europe and long been an intimate friend, so that
he was particularly well fitted for the work. The book was begun after
Taylor's death, December 19, 1878, in Germany, and completed before
the body arrived in America. Five thousand copies were sold before the
funeral.

Dr. Conwell presided at the memorial service held in Tremont Temple,
Boston. Many years after, in a sermon preached at The Temple, he thus
described the occasion:

"When Bayard Taylor, the traveler and poet, died, great sorrow was
felt and exhibited by the people of this nation. I remember well the
sadness which was noticed in the city of Boston. The spontaneous
desire to give some expression to the respect in which Hr. Taylor's
name was held, pressed the literary people of Boston, both writers and
readers, forward to a public memorial in the great hall of Tremont
Temple. As a friend of Mr. Taylor's I was called upon to preside at
that memorial gathering. That audience of the scholarly classes was a
wonderful tribute to a remarkable man, and one for which. I feel still
a keen sense of gratitude. I remember asking Mr. Longfellow to write
a poem, and to read it, and standing on the broad step at his front
door, in Cambridge, he replied to my suggestion with the sweet
expression: 'The universal sorrow is almost too sacred to touch with a
pen.'

"But when the evening came, although Professor Longfellow was too ill
to be present, his poem was there. The great hall was crowded with
the most cultivated people of Boston. On the platform sat many of
the poets, orators and philosophers, who have since passed into
the Beyond. When, after several speeches had been made, I arose to
introduce Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the pressure of the crowd was too
great for me to reach my chair again, and I took for a time the seat
which Dr. Holmes had just left, and next to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Never were words of poet listened to with a silence more respectfully
profound than were the words of Professor Longfellow's poem as they
were so touchingly and beautifully read by Dr. Holmes:

"'Dead he lay among his books,
The peace of God was in his looks!

* * * * *

Let the lifeless body rest,
He is gone who was its guest.--
Gone as travelers h