White's duty as an attaché to Thomas Hart Seymour at St. Petersburg begins this reel. A number of long, descriptive letters indirectly intended for publication contain eyewitness reports of the city, the Tsarist government and religious customs during the Crimean War. Months of study in Paris, weeks of travel in Germany and Switzerland, a winter at the University of Hedin and a spring tour of Italy and southern France are recorded in the correspondence of the second segment. Back at Yale for graduate study, White's letters for the first half of 1857 are largely concerned with his search for a career. There are many family letters and a number from his fiancee, Mary Outwater. Other correspondents of this period are Timothy Dwight, Henry Simmons Frieze, J. M. Fishburn, Randall Lee Gibson and Gilman.