Percival Lowell — an afterglow. Wrexie Louise Leonard
with distinguished effect. He addressed the Royal Institution of Great Britain; and in their native tongues spoke to large audiences in Paris and Berlin. In France he was often mistaken for a Frenchman so fluently and purely did he use the nation's language. He was also at home in Korea and Japan where he spoke and wrote with comparative ease the complicated speech of these Oriental lands. Students of his books on Japan are much impressed by his acquaintance with the psychology of the Japanese people. He had what may be named a unique faculty, that of being able to free himself for the nonce from his own Western culture, and superposing it—if you will—upon the mysticism of the Far East. He was, if one may be forgiven for putting it in that form, the "missing link" which connected and organically related the Soul of the West with the Soul of the East.
Dr. Lowell was fifty years ahead of his time as will be realized in later years by the young people who heard him lecture, and who studied the Lowell Observatory Exhibits of explorations of the heavens at Flagstaff. These exhibits, on transparencies, illuminated by transmitted light, were shown by invitation at centres of education like the American Museum of Natural History; Princeton University; Vassar College; the Boston Public Library; Brown University and elsewhere, where they aroused the enthusiasm of thousands of visitors.
These exhibits were not only beautiful but wonderful. They represented, so everyone might see, discoveries which could be made only at Flagstaff. They were the most advanced and remarkable exhibitions of the kind that the world had ever seen. Appreciated as this was by the older public, Dr. Lowell believed that the most important interest the exhibit could gain was the interest of youth. He began one of his last lectures by saying: "The value of a lecture consists not so much in the body of learning it may be able to impart as in the inspiration it gives others to pursue knowledge for themselves. Especially is this true when the lecture is delivered before an audience of youth. For those entering upon life are the most important hearers a lecturer can ever address. Youth is the period of possibilities. Then it is that the mind is open, plastic to impressions which at the same time it is most potent to retain. …
"Plasticity of mind is the premise to possibility of performance. To retain it longest is the great essential to success. For the ability to succeed has been defined as not having to stop till you get there. In this more than in any other one quality does the great man differ from his fellows: in the gift of perpetual youth. We are told that the good die young; our regret being father to the thought. But certain it is that the great die young even though they pass the Psalmist's limit of three score and ten. The plasticity of their mental makeup is the elixir of life poor Ponce de Leon sought in vain.
"This possibility confronts all of us at the threshold of our career. Not that we are all born with like endowment nor that we all can attain it later. But we can all approach nearer our goal by keeping it constantly before us through the procession of the years. Especially important is it, then, at the start to set one's mind and ambition on that which is best. In the trenchant, if trivial, words of an Ivy orator of years ago at Harvard to his classmates: 'Fellows, don't be content to sit on the fence; sit on the roof. And remember that climbing there does not safely consist in leaps and bounds but in throwing one's heart upward and then persistently pursuing it step by step.'"
VI
Dr. Lowell was of the athletic type though not devoted to sports. At one time he owned the fastest polo pony between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. He was fond of tennis and walking, but averse to golf and motoring. He usually took a train to a certain point where his motor car would meet him merely to transport him from tree to tree that he might pay his respects to the oaks and beeches he so much admired. … How little things entered into his big life is shown in his seed planting with its results. The photographs opposite picture the fruit of his last harvest at Flagstaff. Gourds were his pets, with squashes and pumpkins a close second. In that last autumn on Mars' Hill the fruits of his culture would worthily have graced a thank-offering to the gods.
HIS LAST HARVEST
VII
As an explorer he stood on the tops of all the mountain peaks that came his way, and equally did he like descending to the abysms of cañons. But, indeed, he did not wait for the mountains to come to him; he sought them in the remotest corners of the earth; going to the sacred mountain of Ontaké in Japan; up the glaciers of the Alps and over the walls and chimneys of the Pyrenees. Speaking of Ontaké and the pilgrim clubs peculiar to it, he said:—
"As the chant swelled it sounded like, and yet unlike, some fine processional of the Church of Rome. And as it rolled along, it touched a chord that waked again the vision of the mountain, and once more before me rose Ontaké, and I saw the long file of pilgrims tramping steadily up the slope.
"Thus, humble though their active members be, the Ontaké pilgrim clubs furnish society not to be found in any other clubs on earth; the company of heaven is to be had for the asking. For the Ontaké pilgrim clubs are the only clubs in the world whose honorary members are, not naval officers, not distinguished foreigners, not princely figureheads, but gods."
The views from mountain summits enraptured him and the zest of the scenes there appealed to him greatly, but withal he was often on botany bent. The planet Mars was the only rival to his
THE SAN FRANCISCO PEAKS
Which he ascended in quest of trees
botanical love! Study of the trees was his chief delight in his tramps afield. In a book in manuscript on "Peaks and Plateaux in the Effect on Tree Life," presented to the writer by Dr. Lowell, he shows a deep interest and an unusual knowledge of the subject. This is an account of his ascent of the San Francisco Peaks, of Arizona, in quest of trees. He found them aplenty in the respective zones which he has thus defined:—
| Douglas | Fir | at | 8700 | ft. |
| Silver | " ? | " | 9350 | " |
| Cork | " | " | 9480 | " |
In this charming fashion he describes his original observations:—"From the great height at which it first appeared, from the question mark given the identification at the time, and lastly from the same doubt expressing itself when it was encountered upon the descent upon the face of the mountain, it is probable that the supposed Silver Fir was Cork Fir and it will be provisionally considered. The Cork Fir is a tree of high habit, intermediate between the Fir and Spruce zones though belonging properly to the former. This surprising and truly spectacular Fir is a peculiarity of the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona. Relatively so unknown is it that botanists visiting the region are taken to it at their request as a natural curiosity and it has not