An Afterglow
not the fabled signal-lights of Martian folk, but the glint of ice-slopes flashing for a moment earthward as the rotation of the planet turned the slope to the proper angle; just as, in sailing by some glass-windowed house near set of sun, you shall for a moment or two catch a dazzling glint of glory from its panes, which then vanishes as it came. But though no intelligence lay behind the action of these lights, they were none the less startling for being Nature's own flash-lights across one hundred millions of miles of space. It had taken them nine minutes to make the journey; nine minutes before they reached the Earth they had ceased to be on Mars, and, after their travel of one hundred millions of miles, found to note them but one watcher, alone on a hilltop with the dawn."
Dr. Lowell lectured abroad also 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
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