The cuttings covered every imaginable topic—­small cases in the magistrates’ courts, eccentric entertainments at Newport, the deaths of centenarians, dinners to visiting authors in New York, accounts of performing animals, infant prodigies, new inventions, additions to the Metropolitan Museum, announcements of new plays, anecdotes about prominent men and women, instances of foolish extravagance among the rich, and so on.

Something of the kind was done by each of us, so that when Mr. Pulitzer appeared on deck after breakfast we all had something ready for him.  The first man called usually had the easiest time, for Mr. Pulitzer’s mind was fresh and keen for news after a night’s rest.  The men who went to him later in the morning suffered from two disadvantages, one that they did not know what news or how much of it J. P. had already received, the other that as the day advanced Mr. Pulitzer often grew tired, and his attention then became difficult to hold.

I remember that on one occasion when he had complained of feeling utterly tired out mentally I asked him if he would like me to stop talking.  “No, no,” he replied at once; “never stop talking or reading, I must have something to occupy my mind all the time, however exhausted I am.”

This peculiarity of being unable to get any repose by the road of silent abstraction must have been a source of acute suffering to him.  It is difficult to imagine a more terrible condition of mind than that in which the constant flogging of a tired brain is the only anodyne for its morbid irritability.

My own experience of a morning on the yacht, when Mr. Pulitzer’s nerves had been soothed by a good night’s sleep, was that he walked up and down the long promenade deck and got from me a brief summary of the news.

From time to time he pulled out his watch and, holding it toward me, asked what o’clock it was.  He was always most particular to know exactly how long he had walked.  We had arguments on many occasions as to the exact moment at which we had commenced our promenade, and we would go carefully over the facts—­Mr. Craven had been walking with him from 9.30 to 10.05, then Dunningham had been in the library with him for fifteen minutes, then Mr. Thwaites had walked with him for ten minutes, taking notes for a letter to be written to the managing editor of The World; well, that made it 10.30 when I joined him; but fifteen minutes had to be taken out of the hour for the time he’d spent in the library, that made three-quarters of an hour he’d been actually walking, well, we’d walk for another fifteen minutes and round out the hour.

Often when the appointed moment came to stop walking Mr. Pulitzer felt able to go on, and he would then either say frankly, “Let’s have fifteen minutes more,” or he would achieve the same end by reopening the discussion as to just how long he had walked, and keep on walking until he began to feel tired, when he would say:  “I dare say you are quite right, well, now we will sit down and go over the papers.”