DUKE 
 
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 Treasure %oom 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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 Duke University Libraries 
 
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( UUiJ^i \L£4AJU ^UL&Ui^ 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 AN IDYL OF IMMORTALITY 
 BY JAMES LANE ALLEN 
 
 PORTLAND MAINE 
 
 THOMAS BIRD MOSHER 
 
 MDCCCCXIV 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 JAMES LANE ALLEN 
 
 1914 
 
fl YtZ IU 
 
 TO THOSE 
 
 WHO KNOW THEY HAVE 
 
 NO SOLUTION 
 
 OF THE UNIVERSE 
 
 YET HOPE FOR THE BEST 
 
 AND LIVE FOR IT 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
In a somewhat different and in a 
 much briefer form The Last Christ- 
 mas Tree appeared several years 
 ago in The Saturday Evening Post. 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 IFE on this earth, my 
 children, means warmth. 
 Do not forget that : 
 whatever else it may 
 be, life as we know it is warmth. 
 Every living earthly thing is on 
 fire and every fire is perpetually 
 going out. When the warmth, when 
 the fire, which is within us and 
 which is perpetually going out, goes 
 out for good, that is the end of us. 
 It is the end of us as far as the life 
 which we derive from the planet is 
 ourselves. If our planetary life is 
 our only life, when the planetary fire 
 within us dies out, all of us dies out. 
 If planetary fire be not our only vital 
 flame, vital energy, then planetary 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 dust and ashes are not the complete 
 end of us, not the last word of our 
 terrible lovable human story. And 
 if this be true, what next may come, 
 what kind of story will then begin with 
 ourselves as its characters, what sort 
 of existence for us will emerge from 
 planetary extinction — that has always 
 been the one greatest question, solici- 
 tude, hope, help, song, prayer of our 
 race. It has never been more a prob- 
 lem than now when we know more 
 about many other things than we have 
 ever known yet can find out nothing 
 about this thing and were never so 
 impatient of our ignorance. 
 
 But meantime life on this earth 
 implies warmth and carries warmth: 
 that at least we positively have found 
 out though without knowing what 
 warmth is. Every living terrestial 
 creature is a candle, is a lamp. The 
 
 4 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 rose is a perfumed lamp and when its 
 bowl is without oil, that inimitable lamp 
 so silently built to give off for a little 
 while a few serene rays of vestal beauty 
 as silently falls to pieces. The pine 
 tree is a wild candle poised on a moun- 
 tain table. The eagle is a winged 
 candle burning to cinders on a peak 
 of air. The albatross is a floating 
 conflagration with all the ineffectual 
 sea drenching its back and breast. 
 The polar bear is a four-branch candle 
 in a candlestick of snow. We human 
 beings are laughing and tear-dripping 
 candles, descending swiftly to our 
 sockets. The sun and the stars are 
 candles, whirling golden candles in 
 the night of the universe, a long, long 
 night. One by one they too burn 
 down at those brief intervals which we 
 with our puny measurements call ages. 
 The whole myriad-lighted starry infi- 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 nite, as far as we know, is a mere 
 ballroom arranged for somebody's 
 pleasure, somebody's dancing. The 
 candles may last as long as the master 
 of the revels requires them ; and then 
 perhaps at some strange daybreak of 
 which we can conceive naught, they 
 will go out to the final one — all go 
 out at the coming-on of day. A 
 strange day indeed without any suns, 
 without any stars, these having been 
 consumed during the ancient night. 
 What our human race has always most 
 wished to know, most liked to believe, 
 is that Nature, the whole universe of 
 Nature, is itself but a troubled night 
 of being ; and that when Nature has 
 come to some kind of end, the night 
 of existence will have come to an 
 end also. Beyond will have to be 
 some kind of day, endless day. Our 
 human race has always believed or has 
 
 6 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 tried to believe that on the Nature- 
 ward confines of that day it will be 
 discovered, assembled there, waiting 
 there, having journeyed thither some- 
 how : no matter how, so it arrive. For 
 however dull and petty man may be, 
 however despicable, brutish, aban- 
 doned, there has been no lack of 
 sublimity in his vision, in his faith, 
 of what he is to be : that after the 
 last star has gone out in the night of 
 Nature, the orb of his soul will have 
 but begun to flash the immortality of 
 its dawn. 
 
 Once and for an immeasurable time 
 the whole earth was warm, and life on 
 it being warmth, the life on it was 
 everywhere. That was Nature's par- 
 ticular hour of the night just then — 
 it called for a warm earth completely 
 covered with life. Then one day 
 something took place that had never 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 taken place before. For the first time, 
 for the very first time in the experience 
 of the earth, out of one of its clouds 
 there began to fall, not what had 
 always fallen in the past, drops of rain, 
 but tiny white crystals. At first they 
 were few ; then more and more ; then 
 myriads, myriads, myriads, until the 
 air grew grey with the thick host of 
 them. Finally the scene became as 
 if the sky were the floor of the desert, 
 an upper inverted desert floor cov- 
 ered with fine white sand, with sand- 
 dunes ; and the winds, sweeping and 
 roaring across this desert floor, lifted 
 the dunes, scattered them and swept 
 them along: avalanches of white sand, 
 cloudy landslides of white sand — 
 blown toward the earth underneath. 
 No creature there below had ever seen 
 the like ; and as those avalanches 
 slided down on their heads and backs, 
 
 8 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 tumult, fear, flight followed. Perhaps 
 caught in the raging, roaring tempest, 
 perhaps having lost its way, some bird 
 of brilliant-red plumage flew round 
 and round like a wandering ball of 
 fire, uttering its cry of bewilderment, 
 of helplessness, of its fate — the pro- 
 phetic note of the fate of everything. 
 When the first of these strange cold 
 white crystals struck the warm earth, 
 at once they vanished. So that for a 
 while the vast catastrophe looked like 
 some unfeeling prank of the clouds, 
 some too grave a trick, heartless 
 deception. But faster than the first 
 could melt, others came, more, more, 
 until the later ones arrived before the 
 earlier ones had disappeared. And 
 then they began to stay where they 
 fell. They began to stay and to pile 
 up one on another ; they began to 
 make a white spot, a frozen spot. We 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 know nothing as to how and when 
 and where ; yet we are bound to 
 understand that some time there was 
 the first snowcloud, somewhere the 
 first snowstorm, the first snowbank. 
 
 No human eye beheld it : there was 
 to be no human eye for untold ages 
 yet. But there was one who saw, one 
 who was present, one who had brought 
 it to pass — Time ; and now that the 
 first white spot was prepared and 
 ready like some new flat marble slab, 
 bordered round with the earth's green 
 and awaiting humanwise its due in- 
 scription, Time glanced at it, approved 
 it, stepped forward and stooping down 
 wrote three words in the sand — in 
 the white sand of the sky : 
 
 HIC JACET TERRA. 
 
INCE the unknown day of 
 the first unknown snow- 
 bank, the earth has made 
 no revolution, has not once turned 
 over from side to side without keep- 
 ing undeviatingly in the straight 
 road toward the fulfilment of that 
 epitaph, Time's epitaph. Never since 
 then, though fighting with all its 
 fires, has it been able to drive off 
 that pallid visitant from outer space, 
 never has it been able to prevent the 
 persistent return of that appalling 
 stranger. For the little white spot 
 would not out, would not out for good. 
 If it disappeared in one place, it 
 reappeared in another place. And it 
 invariably brought along more of its 
 kind : each visitant seemed to bring 
 a mate, a family, a tribe. In the 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 blossoming zones of the earth's sur- 
 face where we spend our dream-life 
 of pain and joy, if a solitary bee find 
 its way to a new field in spring, the 
 summer will be likely to bring the 
 swarm. If a migratory bird by some 
 deviation of route alight on a strange 
 continent or island, the species may 
 some day cover that continent or 
 island. And those first downward 
 flights from the clouds began to be 
 followed by other flights, by vaster 
 flocks and flights. And the earth 
 began to have a new trouble. 
 
 She, our very human Mother, had 
 from the first had enough troubles of 
 her own, as without exception we her 
 very human children have had enough 
 of ours. Sometimes her stories had 
 begun well but each of them as it 
 ended ended badly. As we now look 
 back upon any one of these finished 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 stories of hers, we may derive some 
 satisfaction from seeing that it pos- 
 sessed the art, the logic, of being 
 inevitable. But that will be our only 
 joy. Her great novels, her great 
 epics, have uniformly been stupen- 
 dous, immeasurable cataclysms, earth- 
 tragedies. But among them all not 
 one has possessed the awful beauty, 
 the chaste splendor, the universality, 
 of this new trouble of hers with the 
 tiny crystal. 
 
 We are well accustomed as we look 
 out upon Nature at close range to see 
 great creatures harrassed by little 
 creatures. The lot of each big one 
 seems to be in the keeping of some 
 little one, which never quits it, nags 
 it, stings it, wears it out, drives it 
 desperate, makes life somewhat a 
 burden to it and death somewhat a 
 relief. But no one of us has ever seen 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 so huge and powerful a thing as a 
 whole round world pitilessly stalked 
 from age to age, run down, overcome 
 inch by inch, routed out of a fair 
 destiny by such a mite of a tormentor 
 as a crystal. Nowhere have we 
 witnessed so disproportionate a con- 
 flict as that between a sphere and a 
 snowflake. 
 
 Why, some wintry day when you 
 in overcoat and gloves are tramping 
 comfortably across your fields on 
 which snow is falling, stop and draw 
 off one of your gloves, and holding out 
 your hand, catch one of these little 
 terrors, one of these dread arrows from 
 the unseen quiver of all whiteness. 
 Intercept it in its passage towards the 
 earth and let it strike you, strike your 
 palm, instead of striking the Mother 
 who has been struck so often. One 
 instant after it has reached your palm 
 
 J 4 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 it has dropped its disguise and has 
 turned into its old familiar self, a rain- 
 drop, a drop of dew. That is, under 
 the influence of the warmth of your 
 planetary fire, it has returned to its 
 youth. For snow is the old age of 
 water. Cloud, mist, rain, dew — these 
 all are young : their old age is ice. 
 When a dewdrop arranges itself for 
 perpetuity, disposes itself in orderly 
 fashion never to change again, 
 stretches itself out in its rigor mortis, 
 it has become a crystal. It has given 
 up the ghost and has become a ghost 
 — it has become snow, the ghost of 
 the brook, the ghost of the rain. 
 
 Now this — just this — was the 
 Earth's new trouble ; and this ever 
 since has been her increasing trouble 
 and her losing fight : that over vaster 
 and vaster regions of her surface she 
 has lost the power to work the miracle 
 is 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 of the resurrection — to bid the dead 
 arise, take back its life, and having 
 burst from its white sepulchre ascend 
 again to the heavens. This is the 
 trouble of our great Mother — that 
 she has been fighting against old 
 age as we her children fight against 
 it. Old age has been descending upon 
 her from the clouds; and wherever 
 she has not been able to give back to 
 old age its youth, there old age has 
 stayed ; and wherever on the earth 
 old age has stayed, there the earth 
 itself has become old. 
 
 And now for us who live on the earth 
 to-day, looking out upon the battle 
 between the planet and the snowflake, 
 how fares the fighting ? 
 
 16 
 
F you should start from 
 your home in our north- 
 temperate latitude and 
 travel northward steadily on and 
 on, after a while you would find that 
 the air gradually grows colder, myriads 
 of living things begin to be left behind ; 
 fewer and fewer remain ; those that 
 do remain, whether animals or birds 
 or flowers, begin to lose gorgeous 
 color, begin to become white. The 
 countless sounds of living things begin 
 to die out. Everything is changed, 
 colors are gone, songs have ceased. 
 On and on you journey and always 
 you are traveling towards silence, 
 toward the white. And at last you 
 come to the kingdom of the crystal, 
 to the reign of the snowflake, to the 
 old age of the earth ; you come to one 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 of the battlefields where the snowflake 
 has conquered the planet. Perhaps 
 on this northward journey the last 
 living thing you saw in Nature was the 
 evergreen — thriving there in uncon- 
 querable youth on the margin of 
 unconquerable death. 
 
 If you should start from your home 
 and travel southward, you would at 
 first cross land after land where it grew 
 warmer ; but if you kept on, you would 
 at last begin to recognize all that you 
 had seen on your northward journey : 
 life failing, colors fading, the living 
 harmonies of the earth replaced by the 
 discords of Nature's lifeless forces : 
 pinnacles of ice, deserts of snow. 
 Again on those boundaries of desola- 
 tion you would see the sign of the 
 world's youth — its evergreen : only 
 that sign. 
 
 If, starting from your home for the 
 
 18 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 third time, you could rise straight into 
 the air, higher, higher, as though you 
 were climbing the side of an aerial 
 mountain, you would at last find that 
 you had ascended the aerial mountain 
 to a height where, were it a real moun- 
 tain, it would be capped with snow, 
 capped with perpetual snow. For all 
 round the earth wherever its actual 
 mountains are high enough, their 
 summits pierce the level of eternal 
 cold : above us everywhere lies the 
 unseen land of eternal cold. And 
 there again near those summits your 
 eye, searching for some mitigation of 
 the solitude, would come upon the 
 evergreen. 
 
 Some time in the future, we do not 
 know when, but some time the cold 
 at the north will have moved so far 
 southward ; the cold at the south will 
 have moved so far northward ; the 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 cold in the upper air will have moved 
 so far downward, that the three will 
 meet and when they meet there will be 
 for the earth one whiteness, one silence 
 — rest : all troubled or untroubled 
 things will be at rest. 
 
GREAT time had passed, 
 how great no one knew ; 
 there was none to measure it. 
 It was twilight and it was snowing. 
 On a steep mountain's side near its 
 bald summit thousands of feet above 
 the line that any other living thing 
 had ever crossed, stood two glorious 
 fir trees, strongest and last of their 
 race. They had climbed out of the 
 valley below to this height and had 
 so rooted themselves in rock and soil 
 that the wildest gales had never been 
 able to dislodge them. Now the two 
 occupied that beetling cliff as the 
 final sentinels of Nature. They were 
 like two soldiers stationed at the 
 farthest outpost against the enemy 
 and remaining faithful after all they 
 stood for had perished. 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 The two firs looked out toward the 
 land in one direction. At the foot of 
 the mountain in old human times a 
 village had thriven, had worked and 
 played ; church spires had risen, bridal 
 candles had twinkled at twilight, chil- 
 dren had played at snowball. In the 
 opposite direction the trees looked 
 out upon the ocean, once the rolling 
 blue ocean singing its great song but 
 level now or ice-roughened and white 
 and still — its voice hushed with all 
 other voices, the roar of its battleships 
 silenced long ago. 
 
 The two comrade trees had the 
 strange wisdom of their race, ages old 
 and gathered into them through untold 
 generations. They had their memo- 
 ries, their sympathies; they reached 
 one another with language past our 
 understanding. One fir grew lower 
 on the mountainside than the other ; 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 it was like a man so stationed on a 
 declivity that his head barely reaches 
 to the shoulder of another man 
 higher up. 
 
 A slow bitter wind wandered 
 through their boughs, smote their 
 delicate boughs as though these were 
 strings of harps. The two firs became 
 like harpers of old with whitened locks 
 and long hoary beards, harpers who 
 never tire of the past, of great days 
 gone by. 
 
 The fir below, as the snowflakes 
 became thicker on its locks and sifted 
 in more closely about its neck, shook 
 itself loose from them and spoke : 
 
 " Comrade, the end for us draws 
 near ; the snow creeps up. To-night 
 it will place its cap on my head. I 
 shall close my eyes and follow all 
 things into their sleep." 
 
 " Yes," responded the fir above, 
 23 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 " follow all things into their sleep. 
 If all things were thus to sleep at last, 
 why were they ever awakened ? It is 
 a mystery." 
 
 The slow wind caught the words 
 and bore them outward across the 
 land and outward across the sea : 
 
 11 Mystery — mystery — mystery." 
 
 Twilight deepened. The clouds 
 trailed through the trees ; the flakes 
 were formed amid the branches ; it 
 was no longer the fall of the snow : 
 the ice-drops rested where they were 
 formed. 
 
 At intervals, surrounded by clouds 
 and darkness, the low communings of 
 the two trees went on : 
 
 " Where now is he, the strange 
 human one, he of the long thoughts 
 and the brief shadow ? " 
 
 " He thought he was immortal ; 
 to him everything else on the earth 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 perished but he was immortal. Where 
 is he now? " 
 
 " Once when he was very proud he 
 said that he had a Creator who made 
 him to lie down in green pastures." 
 
 " He lies in white pastures. All 
 the millions of his race lie in white 
 pastures, not green pastures." 
 
 " Our fathers, the evergreens, came 
 forth on the earth countless ages 
 before he appeared ; and we are still 
 here untold ages since he disappeared 
 — leaving not a trace of himself 
 behind." 
 
 " The most fragile of the mosses 
 was born before he was born and it 
 outlasted him." 
 
 " The frailest fern was not so per- 
 ishable." 
 
 u Yet he believed that he should 
 have eternal youth." 
 
 " That his race would return 
 25 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 to some Power who had sent it 
 forth." 
 
 11 That he was ever being borne 
 onward to some far off divine event 
 where there was justice." 
 
 " Where there was justice for all." 
 
 " He so loved justice yet so with- 
 held justice." 
 
 " It was the first thing he demanded 
 and the last thing he meted out." 
 
 Darkness now overhung the moun- 
 tain top, deep night above. At inter- 
 vals the firs, being fast covered 
 with snow, went on with their broken 
 talk which wandered back and forth 
 along the track of ages. They had 
 but a few minutes for their thoughts 
 of the ages and they lingered here 
 and there as they willed. 
 
 " This is part of the mystery : if he 
 were but the earth's dust and ashes, 
 like everything else, how could it be 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 so ? How could the earth which is 
 without sin breed in his race so many- 
 sinners ? How could the earth, since 
 it speaks only the truth, have been 
 the father of all his lies ? How, with- 
 out sorrow, could it have been the 
 mother of his sorrows ? The earth 
 never felt joy ; how could it have made 
 him joy incarnate ? What does the 
 earth know of greatness yet it made 
 him great. How could that be ? " 
 " It is part of the mystery." 
 "Had they realized how alone in 
 the universe they were, would they 
 not have turned to each other for 
 happiness ? " 
 
 11 Would not all have helped each ? " 
 " Would not each have helped all ? " 
 " The longest of their rivers was the 
 river of their own blood." 
 
 " If they could have caught it in the 
 basin of some empty sea, they could 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 have floated on it all their fleets of 
 battleships." 
 
 Once in the night they spoke to- 
 gether : 
 
 11 And all his gods, his many gods 
 in many lands with many faces — they 
 all sleep now in their ancient temples ; 
 it is at last the true twilight of the 
 gods." 
 
 " They set shepherds over them. 
 Then the shepherds declared them- 
 selves appointed by the Creator of the 
 universe to lead other men as their 
 sheep : now what difference is there 
 between the sheep and the shep- 
 herds ? " 
 
 " The shepherds lie with the sheep 
 in the same white pasture. They were 
 all sheep : they had no shepherd." 
 
 "And their sins were the sins of 
 sheep, but the sins of silly sheep." 
 
 " Still, what think you became of 
 28 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 all that men did ? How could all that 
 perish ? It was so solid, so enduring ; 
 it was so splendid ; it seemed worthy 
 to be immortal." 
 
 " What became of Science ? How 
 could all that Science was come to 
 naught ? " 
 
 " And his Art — that inner light of 
 himself which was Art ? Do his pic- 
 tures hang nowhere ? Is his music 
 never to be heard again ? " 
 
 "And the love that was in him — 
 was it but a blind force rising into 
 him as the power of the clods ? " 
 
 11 What became of the woman who 
 threw herself away for love : did she 
 find no one at last to weep at the feet 
 of, no one who would free her soul 
 from her body ? " 
 
 " What became of the man who was 
 false : did he ever find a Power that 
 could make him true ? " 
 29 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 "What became of the man who 
 threw himself away in being true : did 
 any Power ever make good to him his 
 ruin? " 
 
 " The young soldier who poured 
 out his life's blood for his country: 
 was he never to have any country ? " 
 
 On the long road of the ages here 
 and there they loitered with their 
 thoughts : 
 
 " But he did fill the world with a 
 great light of himself, with the splen- 
 dor of what he was." 
 
 " And yet it was but half his life, 
 half his glory. He forever dwelt in 
 less than half of the light of his race : 
 the rest he himself put out yet never 
 knew the darkness it left him in. 
 More than half his light he put out 
 in neglected childhood and in youth 
 slain on the battlefield." 
 
 "All the greatest names up and 
 30 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 down the terrible field of his history 
 — there were just as many that he 
 threw away : he dwelt in half the light 
 of his race." 
 
 If there had been a clock to meas- 
 ure the hour it must now have been 
 near midnight as it was reckoned in 
 old human times. Suddenly the fir 
 below spoke out hopefully : 
 
 " May they not after all be gathered 
 elsewhere, strangely altered yet the 
 same ? Is some other star their safe 
 habitation ? Were they right, sheep 
 that they were, in thinking themselves 
 immortal ? Are they now in some 
 other world ? " 
 
 " What tfnow we ? What knew he ? 
 That was the mystery." 
 
 The winds caught the word and 
 carried it away : 
 
 " Mystery — mystery — mystery." 
 
 " Our fathers remembered the day 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 when he went into the woods and cut 
 down one of our people and took it 
 into his house. On the evergreen he 
 set the star : they were for his youth 
 and his immortality. Around those 
 emblems children pressed their faces 
 and reaching out plucked gifts from the 
 branches. The myriads and myriads 
 of the children ! What became of 
 them ? " 
 
 " Be still 1 " whispered the fir tree 
 above. " At that moment, while you 
 spoke, I felt the soft fingers of a child 
 searching my boughs. Was not this 
 what in human times they called 
 Christmas Eve ? There they are 
 again, the fingers of a child ! " 
 
 " Hearken!" whispered the fir 
 below. " Down in the valley elfin 
 horns are blowing and elfin drums 
 beat. Do you not hear them — faint 
 and far away. And that sound — 
 32 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 was it not the bells of the reindeer ! 
 It passed : it was a wandering soul of 
 Christmas." 
 
 " But they are all around me ! They 
 are all around you ! Myriads and 
 myriads are coming, are on the way 
 toward us, the last of their Christmas 
 trees. The souls of all children, 
 wide-awake, are gathering about us 
 ere we pass into the earth's sleep." 
 
 " The souls of the children visit us 
 ere we sleep." 
 
 Not long after this the fir standing 
 below spoke for the last time : 
 
 " Comrade, it is the end for me. 
 The cap of snow is on my head. I 
 follow all things." 
 
 The snow closed over it. 
 
 The other fir now stood alone. 
 The snow crept higher and higher. 
 Late in the long night it communed 
 once more, solitary : 
 
 33 
 
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE 
 
 11 1, then, close the train of earthly 
 things. And I was the emblem of 
 immortality ; let the highest be the 
 last to perish ! Power, that put forth 
 all things for a purpose, you have 
 fulfilled, without explaining it, that 
 purpose. I follow all things into their 
 sleep." 
 
 The sun rose clear : all the moun- 
 tain tops were white and cold and at 
 peace. 
 
 The long war between the crystal 
 and the planet was over : the snow- 
 flake had conquered. 
 
 The earth was dead. 
 
 & & P 
 
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