The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-07-05

Not as the result of a harmless
eclipse. Its spots have been growing
alarmingly. In that day the veil will
not lift at all. A cold rind has formed
over the Kissing hearth of the giant
Then, to the eyes of distant observers
on some fixed star, star will have
died. But 9O,0O0OO of miles from that
liked star something else has died-the
life of the earth. Polar cold spins it.
self around the globe. The last power
of blossoming by the help of light van
ishes in the last plant-cell.
Eelplessly dance the Northern Lights
-helplessly the light of phosphores-
cent creatures Eliminates the sea for
the last time. The oceans freeze solid.
Water and life, the inseparable allies,
die together. With the last drop of
H2O, the great sunhower of earth, Life,
disappears.
The planet-spheres are preserved only
by their monstrous speed in their race
around the sun from falling headlong
into its open flre-sea. They are lost in
that instant in which any cause arises
to hem their desperate fight. 1t may be
a very tiny cause. 1t may develop
very, very slowly through millions of
years. What are millions of years
compared with eternity? If the cause
is there at all, the hour of reckoning
will come and no power of heaven OF
earth can stop it.
And the cause exists.
The cpase through which the planet
darts is not absolutely empty.
Dust, meteoric dust, the finest of me-
| teoric mass, the thinnest of comet stuff
drifts ceaselessly against the planets in
| their path.
Well, then: a lightning express trair
whizzAs along. Swarms of gnats strike
| it and are hurled away. Now and ther
a caterpillar or a bug gets on the raj
and is smashed into nothing. How
! could they check the train?
! But let the lightning express viii;
thus for millions, billions, trillions O
years. Time is a terrible, memorable
| accountant. 1t has built sky-piercinl
mountains out of microscopic kernels
of sand 1t has burst those mountain!
| again with the falling drops of water
sent downward year after yea
| throughout thousands of years.
The endless. limitless swarms o.
gnats will bring the lightning express
to a stop as if with an emergency
| brake when it's hour has come.
Sky-Dust May Stop the Earth.
! The meteoric dust, perhaps in a still
| lpAA5Ci PCliOO CNEAl NllA CNllCA VI h5Ai'
itself, will gradually so check the
course of the planet. Long before
that course has been stopped entirely
the planet will have fallen into the sur
and have disappeared as Pickering
metallic flame. For as soon as its
race has slowed down, even a little
| gravity pounces on ii with vulture'
| talons and tears it toward the sun
! Its path becomes a spiral, until at last
| Ikarus 1t dives itself only a colossa
falling star, into this sun that has
already drunk up so many little me
teoric swarms with its flaming kiss.
Now a second possibility.
! I throw a piece of white hot irol
into the snow of winter. The SNOW
misses, melts, vanishes in steam in {
! big circle around it. But the winte
remains. The frosty night rules un
disturbed. At first the hot iron ha'
conquered the cold in a few seconds
as in play. Now the frost settles OF
the iron, hour after hour, days, weeks
And it masters the iron completely
| till it is cold to its heart like snow.
The sun is such a piece of iron.
To-day it throws its flaming rays
out with such might that the desert:
of earth ninety millions of miles away
scorch the naked foot. A little shift
| of the earth's axis, that will bring the
ice of the pole under equatorial sun
and all the ice would flow in melted
water like the snow around our ho'
lump of iron.
But over this gigantic metallic lumI
of our planetary system there rests
the remorseless frost-night, everlast-
ing. Let US assume that the space Of
universe has a temperature of only
ninety degrees below zero. Its colo
certainly is not less than that. II
that unchanging ice-bath the sun mus
inevitably burn out some day, anc
become cold to it's very heart like oul
lump of iron.
1.-THE day will come" which will bt
no Day but the end of the Sundays
Baldur's reign will be done.
These astronomical reasoning abou
the suns dying have something thai
differentiates them decisively from
other conceptions of the end of the
world. They lack the element of sud
denness, unexpectedness, the acct
dental, We see an end that APP
proaches slowly, in the course only OF
| inconceivably many millions of years
And in this slow, logical, orderly
process we see a great indication
that this coming end is not to b.
! called an end, but is, in truth, onl!
a great, wonderful step in the course
of evolution!
Can There BE An End.
From the primal cell to the primer
dial plant, from the plant to the flrs
animal, from animal to animal, 1t al
follows like the rings in the tree tina