stance, and they never cried, 'I die that my country may live,'
or 'I have got my promotion at last;' they just stared up at the
surgeon and said, 'Have I got to lose that arm?' or 'I am killed, I
think.' You see, when men are dying around you, and horses are
plunging, and the batteries are firing, one doesn't have time to think
up the appropriate remark for the occasion. I don't believe, now, that
Pitt's last words were, 'Roll up the map of Europe.' A man who could
change the face of a continent would not use his dying breath in
making epigrams. It was one of his secretaries or one of the doctors
who said that. And the man who was capable of writing home, 'All is
lost but honor,' was just the sort of a man who would lose more
battles than he would win. No; you, Phillips," said the general,
raising his voice as he became more confident and conscious that be
held the centre of the stage, "and you, Trevelyan, don't write and
paint every-day things as they are. You introduce something for a
contrast or for an effect; a red coat in a landscape for the bit of
color you want, when in real life the red coat would not be within
miles; or you have a band of music playing a popular air in the street
when a murder is going on inside the house. You do it because it is
effective; but it isn't true. Now Mr. Caithness was telling us the
other night at the club, on this very matter--"

"Oh, that's hardly fair," laughed Trevelyan; "you've rehearsed all
this before. You've come prepared."

"No, not at all," frowned the general, sweeping on. "He said that
before he was raised to the bench, when he practised criminal law, he
had brought word to a man that he was to be reprieved, and to another
that he was to die. Now, you know," exclaimed the general, with a
shrug, and appealing to the table, "how that would be done on the
stage or in a novel, with the prisoner bound ready for execution, and
a galloping horse, and a fluttering piece of white paper, and all
that. Well, now, Caithness told us that he went into the man's cell
and said, 'You have been reprieved, John,' or William, or whatever the
fellow's name was. And the man looked at him and said: 'Is that so?
That's good--that's good;' and that was all he said. And then, again,
he told one man whose life he had tried very hard to save: 'The Home
Secretary has refused to intercede for you. I saw him at his house
last night at nine o'clock.' And the murderer, instead of saying, 'My
God! wh