Purple Martins and the Moon 



scale, but you are saving or trying to 

 save only in order that you or some 

 of your descendants may later on have 

 the pleasure of destroying the expected 

 fruit. 



The moon that tempted the purple 

 martin in his twilight flight, and other 

 celestial bodies that have reached the 

 cold storage stage, are, however, not 

 finished worlds at all. Not yet. They 

 have still another experience through 

 which to pass; cracking open and 

 falling apart, or being knocked into 

 bits by collision — through someone's 

 speeding or bad driving through space 

 — and hurled or hurried pell-mell 

 through black voids at incredible speed, 

 reduced to gas by friction or drawn 

 into some sun having sufficient pulling 

 power to collect the flying fragments! 

 Back, in other words, to the original 

 gaseous state, the cycle at last com- 

 plete. We apparently travel, there- 

 fore, as men and mice and moons and 

 martins, not from a lower to a higher 



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