An Afterglow
V
His mind was, it is said, incomparably brilliant. His "mental altitudes" helped make the name Lowell illustrious. Soon after his graduation from Harvard, his cousin, James Russell Lowell, spoke of him as the "most brilliant man in Boston" and his later years brought only a fuller flowering of his early superior genius. His books have been translated into foreign languages, including even Chinese. And in his lectures: in these, as through a rift in the clouds like a star, he shone, while his audiences sat spellbound. He was a marvel to those who heard him. Many will remember that in his last lecture course before the Lowell Institute in Boston (later crystallized into permanent form), standing room was nil, and demands for admission were so numerous and insistent that repetitions were arranged for the evenings. At these repeated lectures the streets near by were filled with motors and carriages as if it were grand opera night! At the termination of this magnificent course there appeared in the Boston Transcript "Percival Lowell's Q. E. D." in which the writer said: "Lowell's lectures on Mars are among the most memorable ever delivered at that Institute, bearing his family name, which has commanded the services of the most eminent of the world's scholars in all lines of thought and research. He has bridged the gap which astronomers pointed out years ago in his
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