his impressions in two words: "Unconscious rehearsing."

Once he handed me a poem he had just dashed off written with pencil,
"To my Saxon Blonde." I was surprised and somewhat flattered,
regarding it as a complimentary impromptu. But, on looking up his
poetry in the library, I found the same verses printed years before:

"If bards of old the truth have told,
The sirens had raven hair;
But ever since the earth had birth,
They paint the angels fair."

Probably that was a habit with him.

When a friend joked him about his very-much-at-home manner at the
United States Hotel at Saratoga, where he went every year, saying as
they sat together on the upper piazza, "Why, Saxe, I should fancy you
owned this hotel," he rose, and lounging against one of the pillars
answered, "Well, I have a 'lien' on this piazza."

His epigrams are excellent. He has made more and better than any
American poet. In Dodd's large collection of the epigrams of the
world, I think there are six at least from Saxe. Let me quote two:

AN EQUIVOCAL APOLOGY

Quoth Madame Bas-Bleu, "I hear you have said
Intellectual women are always your dread;
Now tell me, dear sir, is it true?"
"Why, yes," answered Tom, "very likely I may