His famous Replies to Judge Black in The North American Review were dictated at the billiard table in his home, with cue in hand. A sentence and a paragraph, then a run with the balls, – another paragraph, another run, – and so on to the end.

His Replies to Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Field, Cardinal Manning, and other champions in the religious arena, were composed under like distractions, as most would deem them. To Mr. Ingersoll, however, who had as few men ever had it, the faculty of thinking on his feet, these distractions seemed only to stimulate and concentrate his thought.