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[Discusses his reasons for returning to Paul the letters Paul had returned to him, his fear of prizes, [Nobel Prize in Literature], the Soviet Unionrewriting its history, Paul's inking out hurtful references to living persons (except Mary McCarthy) in the letters and Walt Whitman. ]

[Gives his opinion of Walt Whitman; belittles him and his talent as a poet; comments that Mrs. Thaxter's fever is strong.]

[Likes Stedman's work on Walt Whitmanbecause of its critical view of the subject; calls Whitman's art a "monster" and a "bastard"; does not believe he made a contribution to American literature; compares him unfavorably to other American literary figures such as Poe, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, and Stedman.]

[Twenty-eight pages are clippings from the New York Evening Telegram, February 24, 1892, devoted to the "Great Ingersoll Controversy," in which Robert Green Ingersolland his agnostic views are both attacked and defended, and including his own answers to his critics. The rest of the volume contains clippings, 1884-1892, of contemporary interest on various subjects such as art, astronomy, foreign affairs, history, literature, medicine, politics, and religious matters. There is substantial coverage of W[illiam?] H[anna?] Thomson's address on materialism; Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst's denouncement of the New Yorkadministration, and conflicts with Benjamin Franklin DeCosta, William O'Brien Pardow, and others; Christopher Columbus; and vessels. Also included are numerous obituaries, including two lengthy notices of Walt Whitman's death, one of which is "Ingersoll's Eulogy of Whitman." Other obituaries include ones for Chester Arthur, William Astor, Henry A. Barnum, Joseph P. Bradley, Sidney Dillon, Theodore William Dwight, William Jermyn Florence, John Bartholomew Gough, Hannibal Hamlin, John Pope Hennessy, Charles Stuart Parnell, Max Strakosch, William Henry Vanderbilt, and James Watson Webb. ]