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.