wife were discoursing one day
Of their several faults, in a bantering way,
Said she, "Though my _wit_ you disparage,
I'm sure, my dear husband, our friends will attest
This much, at the least, that my judgment is best."
Quoth John, "So they said at our marriage."

When Saxe heard of a man in Chicago who threw his wife into a vat of
boiling hog's lard, he remarked: "Now, that's what I call going too
far with a woman."

After a railroad accident, in which he received some bruises, I said:
"You didn't find riding on the rails so pleasant?" "Not riding on, but
riding off the rail was the trouble."

He apostrophized the unusually pretty girl who at bedtime handed each
guest a lighted candle in a candlestick. She fancied some of the
fashionable young women snubbed her but Saxe assured her in rhyme:

"There is not a single one of them all
Who could, if they would, hold a candle to you."

He was an inveterate punster. Miss Caroline Ticknor tells us how he
used to lie on a couch in a back room at the Old Corner Bookstore in
Boston, at a very early hour, and amuse the boys who were sweeping and
dusting the store until one of the partners arrived. I believe he
never lost a chance to indulge in a verbal quibble. "In the meantime,
and 'twill be a very mean time."

I often regret that I did not preserve his comical letters, and those
of Richard Grant White and other friends who were literary masters.
Mr. Grant White helped me greatly when I was doubtful about some
literary question, saying he would do anything for a woman whose name
was Kate. And a Dartmouth graduate, whom I asked for a brief story of
Father Prout, the Irish poet and author, gave me so much material that
it was the most interesting lecture of my season. He is now a most
distinguished judge in Massachusetts.

Saxe, like other humourists, suffered from melancholia at the last.
Too sad!

After giving a lecture in the chapel of Packer Institute at the time I
was with Mrs. Botta in New York, I was surprised to receive a call the
next morning from Mr. Charles Storrs of 23 Monroe Place, Brooklyn,
asking me to go to his house, and make use of his library, which he
told me Horace Greeley had pronounced the best working and reference
library he had ever known. A great opportunity for anyone! Mr. Storrs
was too busy a man to really enjoy his own library. Mrs. Storrs and
Miss Edna Dean Proctor