would have been a credit to himself and a comfort to his family for
generations to come.
And there was John Quincy Adams. Relying on his splendid abilities and
his coolness in emergencies, he trusted to a happy hit at the last moment
to carry him through, and what was the result? Death smote him in the
House of Representatives, and he observed, casually, “This is the last of
earth.” The last of earth! Why “the last of earth” when there was so
much more left? If he had said it was the last rose of summer or the
last run of shad, it would have had as much point in it. What he meant
to say was, “Adam was the first and Adams is the last of earth,” but he
put it off a trifle too long, and so he had to go with that unmeaning
observation on his lips.
And there we have Napoleon’s “Tete d’armee.” That don’t mean anything.
Taken by itself, “Head of the army,” is no more important than “Head of
the police.” And yet that was a man who could have said 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 proverbial originality as much as he falls short
of him in correctness of orthography. What sort of tactics did Franklin
pursue? He pondered over his last words for as much as two weeks, and
then when the time came, he said, “None but the brave deserve the fair,”
and died happy. He could not have said a sweeter thing if he had lived
till he was an idiot.
Byron made a poor business of it, and could not think of anything to say,