A belated response: Thinking back, I suppose I was basing my analysis of Twain's negative reaction to Whitman's poetry on the things already mentioned. There may be some other scrap of evidence that is lodged in my mind but I cannot think of what it might be at present. I do have another thing lodged up there. It is the impression that somewhere I read that Mark Twain attended one of Whitman's late life lectures on Lincoln. I am not stating that as fact but I seem to recall noticing it somewhere, like in a very old book about Whitman that listed some of the famous attendees at one of the lectures, I think in New York. Did that happen? Anyone remember anything along those lines? Harold K. Bush, Ph.D Saint Louis University