marvellous transformation. But I
remember that Beecher once acknowledged to a reporter that he never
knew what he had said in his sermon until he looked at the resume in
Monday's paper.

During the hard days of Beecher's trial a lady who was a guest at the
house told me she was waked one morning by the merry laughter of
Beecher's little grandchildren and peeping into their room found Mr.
Beecher having a jolly frolic with them. He was trying to get them
dressed; his efforts were most comical, putting on their garments
wrong side out or buttoning in front when they were intended to fasten
in the back, and "funny Grandpa" enjoying it all quite as sincerely as
these little ones. A pretty picture.

Saxe (John Godfrey) called during one recess hour. The crowds of girls
passing back and forth interested him, as they seemed to care less for
eating than for wreathing their arms round each other, with a good
deal of kissing, and "deary," "perfectly lovely," etc. He described
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
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