The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1900-08-25
ONLY ONE MAN IN THE WORLD.

Astronomers tells us, says AnSU'erS,
that the day must come when the
earth will, like the moon, wheel
through the heavens dead and bar
ren ball Of matter-airless, waterless.
But long, long before that time man
will be extinct, will have disappeared
so utterly that not so much as the
bleached skeleton of human being
will be visible on all the millions of
square miles of the surface of this
planet.
Unless by some huge and univer-
sal cataclysm the whole race is swept
at once into eternity, it is but reason
able to suppose that man, like any
other race of animals, will disappear
slowly, and that eventually there will
be but single human being-some
old, old man, gray-headed and beard
ed, and left to wander alone in a soil
tude that may be imagined, but not
described.
How will he die, this last relic of
the teeming millions that once trans
formed the face of the globe and
ruled undisputed masters of every
other living thing? There are many
fates that may befall him. He may
go mad with the horror of loneliness
and himself end his own miserable
existence. He may be eaten by the
vast reptiles or giant insects which
will then probably infest the soli-
tudes.
But his fate may be far weirder and
more dreadful. Scientists say that
as we burn the coal and timber we are
loose into the atmosphere an ever IN
creasing volume of carbonic acid gas.
Much of this is taken up by plants,
but not all. 1t must increase and
eventually poison the breathable air,
filling the valleys and mounting slow
ly to the hilltops, where the last re-
mains of animal life are striving for
existence. The last man will climb
higher and higher, but eventually the
sufocating invisible flood will reach
and drown him.
Again, it is said that the earth as
it gets older is cracking like dry mud.
These cracks will increase until at
last they will let the waters of the
ocean and rivers sink into the fiery
centre of the globe. Then will occur
an explosion so terrible as may star
tie the inhabitants of neighboring
worlds. The last man in this case
will probably be some Artic explorer
or Eskimo, whom the vast plains OF
ice around will save from instant
death and leave to grill a few moments
till the ice continents are swallowed
by redhot gases and steam.
Suppose these earth cracks develop
more slowly, they may suck away the
water without devastating explosions.
Then the last mans fate will be the
worst describable. He will die of
thirst. The scene of his death will
probably be the great valley in the
Brazilian coast, half way between Rio
Janeiro and the cape, where now six
miles of green water lie between the
steamer keel and the abysmal slime
beneath. There, hopelessly digging
in the ever-drying mud, he must per
ish and leave his bones to parch on a
waterless planet.
The Antartic polar ice cap has been
growing thicker and heavier for nm
counted ages. The distance from the
South Pole to the edge of this ice cap
is 400 miles. The ice rises steadily
from the edge to the centre. At that
centre it cannot be less than twelve
miles in thickness-twice as thick as
Mount Everest is high. Suppose it
splits. Imagine the gigantic mass of
water and ice that will come sweep
ing UP North over the oceans and
continents of the earth. Where, then,
will the last man breathe his final
gasp? High up in the SHOWS of some
great range he will perish miserably
of cold and starvation, looking down
on a huge shallow sea, beneath whose
tossing waters will lie the whole of
the races of the world.
Or last, and perhaps dreariest fate
of all, the human race may outlive
other mammals and last until the sun,
as some day it must, grows dull and
cold and vegetation dies from the
chilled earth. The miserable rem
nant of earth's people must then slow
ly die out after ages of an existence
to which that of the Eskimo of today
is paradise.
HE-Half past eleven Gee Isn't
that clock fast?
She-I think not.