THE FINAL GOAL "O, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt and taints of blood; That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete; That not a worm is cloven in vain, That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain." TENNYSON.-In Memoriam, I, III. THE END When the moon shall have faded out from the sky, and the sun shall shine at noonday a dull cherry-red, and the seas shall be frozen over, and the ice-cap shall have crept downward to the equator from either pole, and no keels shall cut the waters, nor wheels turn in mills, when all cities shall have long been dead and crumbled into dust, and all life shall be on the very last verge of extinction on this globe; then, on a bit of lichen, growing on the bald rocks beside the eternal snows of Panama, shall be seated a tiny insect, preening its antennae in the glow of the worn-out sun, representing the sole survival of animal life on this our earth,--a melancholy "bug."