All these letters had been preserved by Mrs. Whitman and upon her death in 1873 passed to Walt Whitman, who, a very sick man at the time and for long afterwards, simply let them lie in old boxes and bundles until, at his death, they passed to the present editor. Quite a number of books from Whitmans library, many of them annotated by the poet. A great mass of the bulk of which is printed in this volume-a good deal of the rest is of an autobiographical character and is reserved for a new edition of my Walt Whitman or to be used in publications supplemental editor preface to that volume. The magazine articles and news- paper cuttings enumerated in Part VI. of this volume. Each of the other two literary executors took under the poets will the same amount of material as my- self, so it will be seen that these remains were quite extensive, and judging by the careless, hap-hazard manner of their preservation it would seem certain that more must have been lost than were left in existence at...