“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 haste to leave
An inn, nor tarry until eve! 
Traveler, in what realms afar,
In what planet, in what star,
In what vast, aerial space,
Shines the light upon thy face? 
In what gardens of delight
Rest thy weary feet to-night—­’

* * * * *

“Before Dr. Holmes resumed his seat, Mr. Emerson whispered in my ear, in his epigrammatic style, ‘This is holy Sabbath time.’”

Among the books which Dr. Conwell has written are: 

  “Lessons of Travel.” 
  “Why and How Chinese Emigrate.” 
  “Nature’s Aristocracy.” 
  “History of the Great Fire in Boston.” 
  “The Life of Gen. U.S.  Grant.” 
  “Woman and the Law.” 
  “The life of Rutherford B. Hayes.” 
  “History of the Great Fire in St. Johns.” 
  “The Life of Bayard Taylor.” 
  “The Life, Speeches, and Public Service of James A. Garfield.” 
  “Little Bo.” 
  “Joshua Gianavello.” 
  “The Life of James G. Blaine.” 
  “Acres of Diamonds.” 
  “Gleams of Grace.” 
  “The Life of Charles H. Spurgeon.” 
  “The New Day.”

The manuscript which he prepared most carefully was the “Life of Daniel Manin,” which was destroyed by fire when his home at Newton Centre was burned.  He had spent much time and labor collecting data on Italian history for it, and the loss was irreparable.

“Joshua Gianavello” is a biographical story of the great Waldensian chieftain who loved religions liberty and feared neither inquisition nor death.  It is dedicated to “the many believers in the divine principle that every person should have the right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience; and to the heroic warriors who are still contending for religious freedom in the yet unfinished battle.”

The same powerful imagination that pictures so realistically to his lecture and church audiences the scenes and people he is describing, makes them live in his books.  His style holds the reader by its vividness of description, its powerful delineation of character and emotion.