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
Have made the remark in a jocular way;
But then on my honour, I didn’t mean you!”

TOO CANDID BY HALF

As John and his 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.