id a good thing if
he had barred out the doctor and studied over it a while. Marshal Neil,
with half a century at his disposal, could not dash off anything better
in his last moments than a poor plagiarism of another man's words,
which were not worth plagiarizing in the first place. "The French army."
Perfectly irrelevant--perfectly flat utterly pointless. But if he had
closed one eye significantly, and said, "The subscriber has made it
lively for the French army," and then thrown a little of the comic into
his last gasp, it would have been a thing to remember with satisfaction
all the rest of his life. I do wish our great men would quit saying
these flat things just at the moment they die. Let us have their
next-to-the-last words for a while, and see if we cannot patch up from
them something that will be more satisfactory.

The public does not wish to be outraged in this way all the time.

But when we come to call to mind the last words of parties who took the
trouble to make the proper preparation for the occasion, we immediately
notice a happy difference in the result.

There was Chesterfield. Lord Chesterfield had laboured all his life
to build up the most shining reputation for affability and elegance of
speech and manners the world has ever seen. And could you suppose he
failed to appreciate the efficiency of characteristic "last words," in
the matter of seizing the successfully driven nail of such a reputation
and clinching on the other side for ever? Not he. He prepared himself.
He kept his eye on the clock and his finger on his pulse. He awaited
his chance. And at last, when he knew his time was come, he pretended to
think a new visitor had entered, and so, with the rattle in his throat
emphasised for dramatic effect, he said to the servant, "Shin around,
John, and get the gentleman a chair." And so he died, amid thunders of
applause.

Next we have Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, the author of Poor Richard's
quaint sayings; Franklin the immortal axiom-builder, who used to sit up
at nights reducing the rankest old threadbare platitudes to crisp
and snappy maxims that had a nice, varnished, original look in
their regimentals; who said, "Virtue is its own reward;" who said,
"Procrastination is the thief of time;" who said, "Time and tide
wait for no man" and "Necessity is the mother of invention;" good old
Franklin, the Josh Billings of the eighteenth century--though, sooth to
say, the latter transcends him in pr